


Postcards from Space

by 64907



Series: Tapestry From An Asteroid [2]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, F/M, Future, Gen, M/M, Off-World, Outer Space, Prostitution, Robotics, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-04-30 16:08:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14500683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/64907/pseuds/64907
Summary: Four years into the life of Ninomiya Kazunari, one of the thousands of pleasure bots in an off-world colony two point seven million light years away.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please check tags first, as well as the series this thing is a part of.
> 
> This was completed sometime around June 2015, then I forgot about it and went back to editing it after I saw Blade Runner 2049. Then I forgot about it again and remembered it only when I was sorting out my gdrive. Finally posting it after three years lest it never sees the light of day: the Nino(ai)-centric sequel of the original.
> 
> None of this will make sense if you haven't read [the previous work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295184), and if you know what happens in that one, it happens here too. :D But since Nino is bumping up on my list of faves thanks to his medical drama and Jun keeps on talking about space and stuff, here we are.
> 
> I will be posting on an installment basis because of the RL stuff I should be doing, but I probably won't take too long to edit the rest. Maybe.

**Year 2233, June 17th, in the third planet of the Solar Sys—unknown location.**  
  
When Nino opens his eyes, the first thing he sees are the twin suns overhead, one at fifty-six point eight degrees lower than the other and seven times less the density.  
  
The next thing he sees is a hand being waved right in front of his face and he follows it. He sees it attached to an arm, to a shoulder, and finally to a face having a blinding, almost welcoming smile.  
  
“Do you know your name?” the man asks once their eyes meet, lowering his outstretched palm.  
  
Nino blinks.  
  
“Ninomiya Kazunari,” he answers dutifully. The man nods, and Nino takes his time to look at him. A beige leather satchel is strapped around his trunk, a simple shirt made of fiber from a common tree plant in Earth, and a pair of cropped pants made of wool-like material, its edges ending right above his shins. He’s also wearing sneakers, their neon blue color a little hurtful to the human eyes.  
  
Not to Nino’s.  
  
“Do you know your serial number?” the man asks, and Nino moves his eyes back to the man’s face.  
  
“789-9235-741-000-X3,” he answers without pause. The man nods once more, the grin never leaving his lips. Nino wonders if he has always looked like that, if he has always had a smile that humans will probably refer to as ‘infectious’. Nino doesn’t know enough humans to be able to tell; this man in front of him is the first human he has ever interacted with.  
  
“What type are you?” the man asks, his head tilted and expression expectant. This pop quiz is something Nino didn’t expect the moment he opened his eyes, but he answers anyway; something inside him is dictating that it’s the polite thing to do.  
  
“Pleasure. Series X3, developed by—” he doesn’t get to finish because the man suddenly clamps a hand over his mouth, a finger over his own lips. Nino interprets it as the human gesture for quiet, and he nods his head slowly to assure the man that he understands. The man lets go of him, a relieved sigh escaping his lips.  
  
“That was really, really close,” the man murmurs as he looks around, and Nino can only watch him with his head cocked to the side. “Nino,” the man says, looking at him, “that’s your nickname by the way, in case you don’t know—”  
  
“I know,” Nino says immediately, and the man grins, not even slightly upset at the interruption. Nino is beginning to think nothing can irk this man, and he wonders if all humans are like this one. Are they as seemingly unstoppable as this man in front of him, with his blinding shoes and equally blinding smile?  
  
“Okay, just checking. Anyway, don’t repeat that again, all right? Especially the part who developed you. If anyone asks what’s your type just answer ‘pleasure’ and smile at them. Smiling really does the trick because I made sure of that. Okay?” the man tells him in a hushed tone, shoving his hands inside his pockets. He leans his weight on one foot and looks at him expectantly.  
  
Nino nods his assent, and the man sighs before grinning at him again.  
  
“Do you know who I am?” is what the man asks next.  
  
Nino meets the man's eyes, black ones that add to the overwhelming impression of giddiness he seems to radiate in waves. “Aiba Masaki,” he answers slowly, and he watches in fascination as Aiba’s grin grows wider. For a moment Nino didn’t think that was possible.  
  
“That’s right,” Aiba says, extending a hand in front of him, and Nino looks at it questioningly. “This is a human gesture,” Aiba explains, taking his right hand and clasps it with his own before shaking them together. “You do it when you meet someone for the first time.”  
  
Aiba murmurs something like “I may have neglected to input that into you,” his voice small enough that Nino is sure no human would have heard it.  
  
“You made me,” Nino finds himself confirming as he stares at their linked hands. He catalogues the difference between his smaller one and Aiba’s, how he has bigger palms and shorter fingers while Aiba has the opposite. He looks up to meet Aiba’s eyes, and there’s something there his systems cannot define, but Aiba immediately blinks it away as he lets go of Nino’s hand.  
  
“Yes, I did.” Aiba moves to stand beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “Do you have anything you want to ask me? You can ask me anything.”  
  
Nino frowns at the sensation of being held, something he’s programmed to be sensitive to given his model. He calculates that there is a three point four percent difference between the body heat that he generates and Aiba’s natural one.  
  
“Where are we?” Nino asks, his eyes moving to watch the shuttles taking off to the sky and the myriad of people in this place—humans, replicants, even aliens of various races. There’s an Omegan walking with an arm linked to a replicant, a pleasure type like Nino. He watches them disappear into a corner before a holo advertisement fifty-three point nine feet away from where he and Aiba are standing starts playing, a cosmetic development that captured the attention of eighteen point two percent of the people within a hundred meter radius.  
  
“This,” Aiba says, gesturing to the scenery before their eyes, the overflowing activity and life flooding all of Nino’s senses at once, “is our new home.”  
  
\--  
  
Nino learns that he is in Praximus V, the fifth established off-world colony in the nine sister planetoids of the Praximus Stargate in the Triangulum Galaxy, two point seven million light years away from Aiba's home planet. Aiba tells him that over a platter of salisbury steak, something Nino discovers is his favorite, according to Aiba.  
  
They’re in a diner in the Praximus metropolis, close to the end of the pleasure district. Looking outside, Nino has already counted a hundred and six pleasure models walking—eighty-one point four percent of them having companions despite the twin suns of the colony still indicating day time.  
  
“You’ll find out more about yourself as the days go by,” Aiba explains, shoving bits of curry rice into his mouth. He doesn’t bother to finish chewing before he talks again. “I don’t know what you’re bound to find out because you’re my first and only project, so I guess everything is all experimental from here on.”  
  
Nino slices the steak and puts it in his mouth, chewing slowly. Aiba looks at him expectantly, the corner of his lips upturned to a smile, and Nino tells him that he finds the meat delicious and tender; perfectly suitable to his palate.  
  
Aiba looks victorious, laughing a little and thus making his eyes turn into slits, something Nino watches in fascination. “Like I said, Nino, you’ll find out more but you’re going to have to do it on your own. I don’t know how far the program extends and how far it can develop, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything else aside from that’s all for you to discover.”  
  
“Do I have to tell you?” Nino asks him, making Aiba’s hand pause. He’s halfway into shoving a spoonful of curry rice into his mouth when Nino asks. “When I discover something about me, something new and not part of what you programmed into me, something I may have developed as time passes by, do I have to tell you?”  
  
Aiba lowers the hand holding the spoon, the metal making a distinct clink against the porcelain plate. He leans back on his booth, a different kind of smile now etched on his lips.  
  
Nino is not certain how to define it, but it’s nothing like the ones Aiba kept showing him earlier. It’s almost akin to the unreadable expression he saw in Aiba’s eyes when he stated the truth that Aiba made him.  
  
“That,” Aiba says, his shoulders slightly slumped, “is up to you.”  
  
Nino narrows his eyes, and he notes that what he feels for the first time is confusion. He doesn’t understand. His computer brain is incapable of discerning the true meaning in Aiba’s statement. He has come up with the literal meaning of it being up to him and it doesn’t make any sense.  
  
Simply put, it does not compute.  
  
He tilts his head, meeting Aiba’s eyes.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he says carefully, and Aiba smiles.  
  
“Hey, that’s new,” Aiba says, a finger pointed to his face. “I didn’t know you could do that. I don’t mean that in an offensive manner, no. I just didn’t think I was capable of programming something that can directly state something as difficult that.”  
  
Aiba leans forward, his elbows resting on the tabletop. “What you told me just now, Nino, when you said you didn’t understand,” he begins, searching Nino’s eyes and Nino waits, “that’s something you won’t find a lot of humans will be willing to admit. So I’m really glad to know that you can say that, that you can be as honest as that. Someday you probably won’t remember that you ever admitted it to me, but I will and as early as now I’m telling you that I’m grateful for it.”  
  
Nino blinks at him in confusion. He doesn’t understand any of it, from Aiba’s response to his question to the subsequent explanation behind his statement, and the confusion flows through him, evident in every part of his face. “I still don’t understand,” he says, and Aiba smiles, his teeth showing this time.  
  
“That’s okay. You’ll find that it’s okay not to understand. But to answer your question on whether you have to tell me, that’s up to you. If you feel like sharing with me whatever happens to you from this point on, you’re welcome to do so. You’re always welcome to do so. If you choose not to and to file them away in your memory databanks for your personal recollection, then that’s okay too.”  
  
“You made me,” Nino states for the second time, and Aiba leans back, jerking his head slightly as a gesture for him to go on. “You made me, so don’t you have a say in this? Aren’t you supposed to tell me to report these things to you, so you can improve your research and develop something far more superior in the future? Isn’t that how it works?”  
  
Aiba sighs, looking to his right. Nino notes that when humans do that, the probability of them recalling a memory is at ninety-seven point five percent. When humans look to their left, the same probability applies for the idea of them thinking up of a good lie.  
  
Aiba is recalling a memory.  
  
“No,” Aiba says after a moment, picking up his spoon and scooping a generous amount of curry rice. “No, that’s not how it works for us. I told you, didn’t I? You’re my first and only project.” He looks up to meet Nino’s eyes and Nino blinks at the expression there, yet another thing he cannot put a name to. “And being my first and only project, I’m proud to say that you’re the only one of your kind, my most finest work.”  
  
Nino blinks once more at that statement, his systems telling him that there’s something wrong with that claim. But for some reason, he doesn’t choose to open his mouth and correct Aiba about the double superlative. Instead, he chooses to say the general response of agreement.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Aiba smiles then, twitching his lips towards Nino’s platter. “Eat,” Aiba says, already shoving curry rice into his mouth. “That’s your favorite after all. And today is your birthday.”  
  
His computer brain immediately comes up with a retort of "I’m not human so birthdays shouldn’t apply," but something tells him that should he choose to say it, Aiba will simply wave off his concerns. For a reason Nino cannot yet fathom, he finds himself trusting the words of the man who engineered him, thinking that it’s possible that Aiba knows better.  
  
He looks down and slices another piece of meat, doing exactly what Aiba told him.  
  
\--  
  
“Do I have to live with you?” Nino asks as he stands outside the diner with his maker. The second sun of Praximus is setting, and overhead the colony’s eight moons are starting to appear along with the twinkling stars.  
  
“Nah,” Aiba says, his eyes shut as the night breeze hits. “You’re a pleasure type, so when this hour arrives you’re supposed to be out there, doing what a pleasure type does. You’ll get a place of your own, have clients, have a lot of competitors, but you’ll get by.”  
  
Not even his systems can calculate the possibility of all that happening, and he frowns. “How can you be so sure?” He doesn’t understand Aiba’s optimism and enthusiasm, and he wonders if all humans are like this or not.  
  
Aiba opens his eyes then, turning to him. “I’m not, but that’s what I believe. Call it a parental instinct, but I’m hardly ever wrong about these things.” Aiba extends a hand to him, and this time Nino knows what to do.  
  
He takes it in his own and shakes it, but he voices out his confusion. “I thought I’m only supposed to do this when I’m meeting someone for the first time?”  
  
Aiba grins, squeezing his hand before letting go. “You also do it when you part ways with someone. This is where I leave you, Nino. This is your side of the city, with all the high-end establishments surrounding us in every corner and with all the pleasure models walking around us. This is where I let you handle things on your own as I go and handle things on my own.”  
  
“Where do you intend to go?” Nino asks, feeling something his system names as curiosity. Aiba seems to have taught him a great many things and exposed him to different emotions in less than a day.  
  
“Probably to the edge of the city; I heard that there are places to live there.” Aiba opens his satchel and hands him a display pad, followed by handheld tablet. Nino knows how to use them since they’re computers like him, though he still looks up for an explanation.  
  
“Well I know you know what they are,” Aiba says, reaching out to swipe a finger on the pad screen and they both watch as it powers up, a female computer voice indicating acknowledgement. “But just in case you need some explanation, these two are for your personal use. My contact information is there so if you need me, send a message or a holo or call. I’ll get in the first hovercar I see and find you. Your credits are there, but I’m afraid it isn’t much.” Aiba scratches his head in what seems to be embarrassment, his cheeks reddening. “Blew out most of the savings to get us here, but that should be more than enough. I know I programmed the budgeting code somewhere in your syntax because that’s something I don’t have myself, so I’m pretty sure before 2234 comes you’ll be far richer than I’ll ever be.”  
  
Aiba reaches up to squeeze his shoulder, giving him a small smile. “Now go and show them what an Aiba Masaki creation is capable of.” Aiba reaches out to grab both of his shoulders to turn him around before shoving him out into the busy street.  
  
Nino turns to Aiba one last time, and Aiba has two fingers hovering on the corner of his lips. His mouth is moving, and Nino reads it as ‘remember to smile’, before Aiba waves at him (the human gesture of farewell, Nino’s mind interprets) and turns around to walk in the opposite direction.  
  
\--  
  
His first client is a visiting tourist from the Reticulum Stargate, a human woman who never visited Earth. She introduces herself as Kyoko and tells Nino that she was born in Reticulum III, the most prosperous colony in that corner of outer space.  
  
When Nino asks why she went up to him, she merely shrugs. “I like your face.”  
  
Finding that it’s a good enough reason, he accompanies her for the rest of the night. They talk, and Nino discovers that he’s well-versed, that he can handle a conversation and keep the mood lighthearted, happy. The way she laughs is an indication of it. They’re in a private room of traditional Terran design, something she explains to him.  
  
“I’ve never been to Earth, as I told you,” Kyoko says, gesturing to the rest of the room. “But they say there’s a diversity of culture there, and this is one of those cultures that managed to survive and thrive.”  
  
“Don’t you want to see Earth?” he finds himself asking because of his curiosity. Kyoko looks thoughtful for a moment, her eyes staring at the space behind him. Nino is sitting across her, a small table separating them with two cups of teas poured by an attendant earlier. Nino is yet to drink his, unsure of the taste.  
  
She hums. “Not really, no.” She takes a sip from her tea and places the small porcelain cup back on the table before stroking the rim of it with one of her long fingers. “There’s so much to see aside from Earth. I decided long ago that I’ll only go there when I’m old and wrinkling.” She laughs.  
  
She reaches for his hand over the table, and Nino flips his hand to hold hers better. “What about you, Nino?” she asks, resting her chin on her other hand. “Do you want to see Earth?”  
  
He blinks at the question, remembering that he initially thought of Praximus V as Earth until he opened his eyes, just this morning when he arrived along with his maker. Now he’s in the company of a wealthy human tourist simply because she likes his face, and he’s starting to think that Aiba knew exactly what he was talking about before they parted ways, about him making it big despite his initial disbelief.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his forefinger stroking her wrist. “I probably won’t even have the time should I wish to see it.”  
  
Kyoko’s eyes narrow a little, reaching out to push Nino’s cup towards him, an invitation for him to drink. He does, finding the taste soothing and the temperature as what he expected. Tea is something he can get used to.  
  
“It matters,” she tells him, and Nino looks up, tilting his head in question. “It matters because it’s what you want. What you want always matters regardless if you can have it or not.”  
  
She says all of that confidently, and for Nino, perhaps it comes with her standing, with her life that is used to luxury from the day she was born that she can easily hop to different stargates and see the universe in her lifetime. He remembers how Aiba stated that he blew out most of his savings to get himself and Nino here, and Nino can easily deduce that Aiba and Kyoko are two humans of two different standings shaped by different circumstances.  
  
Humans are different from one another despite their race being the same and they react differently even when presented with the same situations. Aiba was all smiles in front of him, and Kyoko is all glances, fleeting touches. Of course there’s the difference regarding who they are to Nino, with Aiba being his engineer and Kyoko being his first client, but the difference still amazes him. Kyoko does not confuse him as much as Aiba does, and she seems far more precise in her actions than Aiba will ever be.  
  
“Then,” Nino says, placing his teacup back on the table, “I suppose I do want to see it, just to know if it’s different from Praximus.”  
  
Her thumb is now stroking the white of his wrist as she listens, a small smile on her red lips. “Every colony is different,” she says as she stretches her legs, letting out a little grunt as she does so. “From the inhabitants to the establishments to the skies above, everything is different. You will never find a colony similar to another.” She meets his eyes, and he patiently waits for her to continue. “And yet they’re all the same.”  
  
Nino narrows his eyes in confusion, and he keeps his eyes on her as he sips his tea. It’s grown colder by six point twelve percent, but it remains warm enough that he doesn’t reach out and pour himself another cup. “The same?” he repeats, and she nods. “In what sense?”  
  
“All colonies have a population consisting of humans, replicants, Omegans, Cygnians, Lyrans, and every other alien lifeform you can think of. All colonies suitable for human life require oxygen to be inhabitable, require water to sustain Terran life. And yet, you can never have the same lifeform in the same colony at the same time.” She peers at him under her long lashes, a patient smile on her face. “That’s what makes it different, and yet the same. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes,” Nino says, and it’s the truth. He’s learning many things from Kyoko, that her standpoint is vastly different from Aiba’s. She is telling him things that Nino is sure Aiba won’t be able to tell him, in the same manner that he is sure that Aiba has some things that Kyoko will never be able to share with him. He finds that humans are interesting in their difference, and in Kyoko’s terms, different and yet the same.  
  
Kyoko sips her tea, still not letting go his hand. Her warmth is mingling with his, and Nino finds her touch to be soft and full of grace, something he files away for future reference. Surely she will not want to be held roughly, not when her touch suggests nothing like it. Nino has been programmed to pick up on the subtlest things regarding his clients, to be able to cater to their desires and to be of utmost service for the night. He’s been programmed to perform better than the average human despite looking like one, made to pick up on the tiniest signals to ensure maximum client satisfaction.  
  
“You’re new, aren’t you?” is what she says next, and Nino ponders on the meaning of new for a moment. She could mean that he’s new in the business and she would be correct, seeing as this is his first night with his first client. She could also mean that he’s been newly activated since today is his birthday according to Aiba, and she would still be correct about that.  
  
But Nino supposes she cannot know his incept date because she’s human and humans, like their bioengineered creations, don’t possess the ability to know such things unless it was offered beforehand. Seeing as he didn’t offer any information regarding his incept date, he concludes that it’s the former she’s talking about.  
  
“I am,” he says, taking her pulse and noting that it is elevated, as it should be since she’s in the company of a pleasure type, unless the pleasure model is not particularly effective in its advances. “Does that bother you?”  
  
She smiles, finishing her tea. “It doesn’t. I just wanted to make sure. So this is your first?”  
  
Nino nods, taking one last sip from his tea and shoving the teacup to the side, something she mimics. She lets out a little laugh at his admission, looking immensely pleased. “Your first client then, Ninomiya Kazunari,” she declares, shifting her grip on him as she stands up, her other hand placed on the table as support. Nino moves to stand as well, and she guides him to the mattress a few paces away from them.  
  
“Does that please you?” Nino asks as she settles herself on the mattress, leaning her weight on one elbow and pillowing her head on her palm. “The idea that you’re my first client?”  
  
She laughs, extending a hand for him to join her. He takes her hand and settles beside her, imitating her position and meeting her eyes. “It does. Immensely. It’s been a while since I had first-timers, but I remember the last one very well.” She leans into his space, her mouth right against his ear. “So you better show me exactly what you’ve got. I have a lot of expectations, and should you meet all of them, I promise to reward you most handsomely, Ninomiya Kazunari.”  
  
Show them what an Aiba Masaki creation is capable of, he remembers Aiba saying, and he grins for the first time ever since his arrival on Praximus. Something washes over her eyes, and this time Nino’s programmed to define it accurately: interest.  
  
“It’s Nino,” he whispers, leaning closer, and he catches her smile. “But you can call me Kazu,” he pauses, dragging a finger across her cheek and watching her shiver, “if it pleases you that much.”  
  
\--  
  
He ends up renting an apartment with Kyoko’s credits. She kept her promise of paying handsomely, and Nino found himself significantly rewarded for that night. She requested his company for three nights straight, increasing her compensation for his trouble every time, and finally, before they parted ways (she had a scheduled flight to the Orion Nebula two weeks ago), she asked for his contact information, stating she’ll definitely look him up once she gets to Praximus again.  
  
The apartment is spacious and nearly empty except for a bed and a fridge. It’s situated at the thirty-third floor of a building he deemed to be suitable enough to house him. He takes a hovercar to reach the pleasure district, but he finds that he likes the travel time because it allows him to appreciate his surroundings and to think on various things.  
  
He’s on his fourth week as a pleasure model and is clearly building a reputation for himself, if any of the looks he’s getting from fellow pleasure types mean anything whenever he sits in the same diner Aiba took him to on his birthday. He’s grown comfortable to thinking it’s a birthday instead of an incept date, and he has no one to put the blame on to except for Aiba. He whips out his pad and begins typing a message, but he stops halfway and flicks a finger to delete it, before switching to a holo.  
  
He taps on Aiba’s contact information on the side and the recording is already going for eight seconds before he can think of anything to say. “This is my address,” is what he chooses to go for, flicking his finger to attach the necessary information. “Come whenever you want, but do tell me beforehand.”  
  
He ends the holo and sends it despite his confusion as to why he sent it in the first place, why he thought of contacting Aiba to tell him where he resides. A part of him seems extremely comfortable with the idea of sharing things with his bioengineer, as if the most natural thing in the world for him to do is to trust Aiba Masaki. Another part often wonders what brings on such emotion in him, the attachment he seems to have with Aiba that he knows to be mutual.  
  
There are a lot of things he wishes to ask Aiba, things he wants answers to. He wants to know the reason why his systems initially interpreted this place to be Earth instead of Praximus V, why Aiba got himself and Nino here, two point seven million light years away from Aiba’s home planet. He has a lot of things he wishes to understand about himself, why he’s not allowed to talk to anyone about him being an X3 series developed by Manabu team under the Kitagawa Corporation. He knows for certain that there’s a reason that’s the only thing Aiba forbade him to tell anyone, and he wants to know what that reason is.  
  
Out of curiosity.  
  
It’s something Aiba taught him without Aiba himself not being aware of it, probably. Maybe it’s programmed in his system and is only set to activate once he gets exposed to the appropriate stimuli. Nino doesn’t know. He can’t tell for sure since he’s the engineered and not the engineer. His engineer is somewhere in Praximus, probably in the edge of the metropolis like he told Nino the last time they saw each other, and Nino finds himself wondering what Aiba is doing at the moment.  
  
So far he’s had repeat clients and from time to time he wonders about what they’re doing when they’re not with him. Kyoko is already somewhere in Orion, and the last time Nino communicated with her was when she sent a holo of the Orion night sky along with a note of _See? Different yet the same._ He saved her message and replied with a holo of his own, extending his well-wishes. He ended his message in the same manner, stating that he looks different and yet the same, and he got a reply of agreement from her almost immediately. Back then, he imagined her amused laughter at the message.  
  
His client after Kyoko was a man named Fujisaki who refused to divulge anything about himself, only that he wasn’t a wanted man. Nino didn’t bother to ask. He wasn’t built to ask anyway. Fujisaki was generous with his tips and he seemed genuinely sad to leave Praximus V when he told Nino that “duty called.”  
  
After Fujisaki left he met another client from Lacerta Stargate, son of the Lacertan representative to Earth. A fellow pleasure model by the name of Keiko tells him that he seems to have the knack of getting the wealthiest ones, and he remembers grinning and promising to treat her on his next payday, which needs to happen anytime soon, now that he thinks on it. He gets paid well enough for his services and his clients claim that he’s talented enough.  
  
He can remember one client from the vestiges of the Fornax Stargate stating that his small hands aren’t really an issue, and all in all he felt so proud of himself that the immediate action he took upon receiving the compliment was to tell Aiba about it, who responded with an enthusiastic holo of “That’s my most finest work!” along with a wink that he cannot do.  
  
Nino discovers that he can wink, and he can do it perfectly that it only adds to the appeal and charm he projects to clients and potential clients alike. Four weeks in and he already has a growing clientele, something he’s proud of. He can attribute a bit of his success to Kyoko because the woman had a lot of connections that helped spread his name. She was particularly generous with her praises for him that he found himself handling more clients than he expected within a month of being a pleasure model in Praximus.  
  
He supposes that Aiba was right about the declaration that he’ll be richer than his maker come 2234, if he keeps up with this streak. He intends to; he enjoys being considered as a competitor among his fellow pleasure model replicants rather than a mere player. He has a few pleasure types he’s come to friendly terms with—Keiko being an example—but most give him the look he can only interpret as contempt.  
  
The reality that his fellow pleasure types tend to look at him as someone worthless for sixty-six point twenty-three percent of the time gives him the idea that it’s probably the reason why Aiba forbade him to ever mention his series and his developer to anyone. Aiba seems to look out for him, and Nino knows Aiba calls it ‘parental instinct’ to do so that he doesn’t bother to ask why. Parenthood has a lot of connotations, and Nino doesn’t have it in him to tell Aiba that their relationship is of an extraordinary nature, since most replicants are used for research and diagnostic purposes regarding future developments.  
  
Aiba told him that it isn’t like that between them, and Nino respects that because he has encountered enough humans to tell him that every human is different and it’s part of his design to adapt to that difference. He finds that he can respect his maker’s wishes and follow the only two things Aiba asked for: to show other pleasure models what he has to offer in the business and to contact Aiba whenever he wishes to.  
  
The weeks pass and turn into months and his nightlife prospers, and he finds himself telling Aiba about most of his encounters with his clients. He neither mentions their names nor describes what they look like despite no one telling him it’s not allowed to do so. Confidentiality is a part of his program along with privacy and he treats every personal aspect of his client as something private. He only shares a few details to Aiba, what most clients seem to favor and which techniques work in a surefire manner, something that results to him receiving a laughing holo from his maker.  
  
For his part, Aiba seems to be extremely proud of him, and while Aiba is yet to answer any of his questions, Nino decides that he can content himself with the idea that his engineer is proud to have made him and tries to show that every moment he gets, especially when Aiba drops by his place.  
  
By this time Nino has acquired several items inside his apartment, some of which he purchased for himself, others which clients bequeathed to him. Some clients are extremely lavish with their gifts, and while he feels appreciative and grateful for the trinkets they give him as a form of thanks, he finds most of them to be a waste on him since he doesn’t like dressing himself up unless a client specifically requests for it.  
  
He has a couple of traditional celebratory Terran robes, something Kyoko gifted to him before she left she handed him a box containing the garment, claiming it’s a present from his first client and something to remember her by. Since then he makes sure to purchase something similar since he’s handled a couple of clients interested in the way he looks in them, and most of them are the high-paying ones.  
  
He doesn’t wear it to impress, though. He wears it to cater to what his client for that night wants, and if they ask for Ninomiya Kazunari in traditional garments, then what they will get is him wearing such. He’s been programmed to adapt to whatever desire a client has, to whatever specific kink a client may be into, and to be particularly effective whenever it’s time to demonstrate just how different the service he offers is from other pleasure models.  
  
Nino has become a competitor because of that, and while it decreases the chances of him befriending anyone of a similar type, it, however, increases the chances of him meeting even more people he can add to his clientele. The scorn he receives from his fellow replicants makes him resort to resuming his job without paying any mind to the competition around him.  
  
If they see him as a threat, he considers it a part of him doing what his maker asked him to do. If other pleasure models consider him as a fierce competitor in the business, that only means he’s successful so far and that Aiba Masaki is one proud engineer somewhere in the edges of the metropolis.  
  
Nino realizes that he still hasn’t visited Aiba despite Aiba forwarding his address the moment Nino sent his, and he promises to keep that in mind as Praximus gives way to colder nights.  
  
\--  
  
Five days before Christmas, he receives a note from Aiba that asks him to keep his schedule free on the 24th, and he agrees to it without second thought. Aiba then tells him to meet up in the same diner they celebrated his birthday at, and when the day arrives, Nino shows up wearing a white shirt with a jacket thrown over, along with the simplest pair of jeans he can find in his growing closet.  
  
Not that he likes to shop and wears the most extravagant things. It’s just that for the past two months he has a reputation he needs to maintain, and he at least tries to look decent for ninety point eight percent of the time.  
  
However, since it’s only Aiba he’s meeting for tonight, he chooses the most comfortable pair of jeans and shoes that he has, and he waits for three minutes and thirty-two seconds before Aiba slides into the same booth.  
  
“I’m paying tonight,” Aiba informs him, and he smiles.  
  
“You always pay,” he says in reply, and Aiba laughs.  
  
“Yeah, I always pay and you never pay. Guess I overdid the budgeting syntax to the point you don’t pull out your own credits.” Aiba waves for the waitress to take their order, and he orders a platter of steak along with potato salad as Aiba orders for an Orion delicacy, something Nino never tried before.  
  
“Why are we here?” he asks after the waitress left and Aiba’s drumming his fingers against the table. Aiba has his face plopped on his hand as he meets Nino’s eyes, and Nino waits for him to explain because Aiba’s job seems to revolve around a lot of explaining when it’s the two of them together.  
  
Aiba smiles, looking out the window. “It’s my birthday.”  
  
Nino never knew until now, and he wishes he had so he could have adapted to the human custom of gift-giving during birthdays. Treating someone during one’s own birthday is a common Terran practice, but Nino somehow feels embarrassed about not knowing and not being able to hand over anything.  
  
But Aiba doesn’t seem concerned. He turns back to Nino, grin still on his face. “Which is why I’m paying, and since it’s my birthday, we’re drinking. But I don’t know the right places in this part of the city so I guess you have to show me where we can drink in peace.”  
  
At that, Nino already has a couple of establishments in mind, being a member of most high-end bars including the members-only ones. And yet, for some reason, he has a feeling Aiba won’t like any of those establishments, so he chooses the most obscure bar he knows and he promises to take Aiba there after dinner.  
  
They have a light conversation over dinner, and Nino discovers that his maker has been to the second moon of Praximus some three months ago, collecting rock samples. When he asks Aiba why, the man just says he hasn’t seen anything similar to it before, and Nino resolves to reserve any questions regarding Earth once they’re drinking.  
  
There’s a lulling melody playing by the time they enter the bar, and somewhere, a couple of blocks away from where they are, the Praximus nightlife is starting given the lateness of the hours.  
  
Since Nino has kept his schedule free as requested, he chooses a seat close to the counter and gestures for Aiba to sit with him. They order their respective drinks, and Nino wonders just how many kinds of food and beverages has Aiba tried for him to order a Mensan whiskey without hesitation. Nino knows that that is one of the strongest alcoholic drinks ever offered in this establishment, and he tells Aiba as much.  
  
“Ah, but that depends if you can hold it or not,” Aiba tells him, and Nino drops the subject, but not without a warning of “I won’t take you home if you get too smashed, all right?”  
  
Aiba grins, flashing him a thumbs up. “If I do get too drunk to get home, I can probably crash at your place.”  
  
Nino sighs in defeat, knowing that it’s up to him to make sure that doesn’t happen because he has a feeling that getting Aiba drunk turns him into a different person altogether. He has a feeling getting Aiba inebriated will lead to interesting but potentially disastrous things, and yet, the curiosity in him wins out so he actually wants to see it for himself. He can only hope he can handle Aiba at his worst. Nino has more than enough encounters with humans to be able to know for himself that it’s a general human reaction, that alcohol brings forth a side to human personality that only seems to amplify their best and worst traits. Alcohol seems to influence them to speak their minds, to say what they normally wouldn’t say, and Nino thinks this is his chance to know.  
  
Their drinks arrive (Nino ordered a Praximian sherry, nothing too strong) and for a while, Nino sits with his maker in silence, an old Terran music surrounding them.  
  
“You have something you want to ask me?” Aiba asks, sipping his whiskey.  
  
Nino raises an eyebrow. “How do you know?”  
  
The man shrugs, twirling the glass in his hand. It looks like a tiny fishbowl and has a blue luminescent hue to it. Far from cheap, Nino can tell. This bar may be obscure, but it can offer majority of the drinks as much as a members-only one can. “Well, I’m kind of keeping you in the dark ever since, so I figured one of these days you’re just going to ask me what I’m obviously not telling you. I’m not very good at keeping secrets so most of the time I just exercise my right to remain silent. I’m sure you noticed that.”  
  
Nino did notice that, even long ago. Aiba is the type of human who enters into easy rapport with nearly anyone, the type to easily fall into harmless conversation because of his bubbly and optimistic personality. Nino admires that about him because it makes him unique for his kind. Most human clients he had the chance to be with are either too reserved or too condescending to consider forming even the simplest of relationships with their fellow humans, which is why they prefer to be with replicants. Nino and his kind seem to offer the sensitivity humans seldom exhibit, and yet something they all seem to crave in general.  
  
Nino is personally conducting a study on human behavior, filing all observations in his memory bank and from time to time, comparing it to the first human he ever met in his life: the man sitting across him holding all the answers to things he still doesn’t know despite being in Praximus for six months and a week already. With the hours slowly approaching the Terran tradition of Christmas, that will make him a pleasure model in Praximus V’s pleasure district for far longer than he expected, considering his rather shady origin that Aiba only acknowledges openly tonight.  
  
Maybe it’s his birthday or the fact that it’s almost Christmas that makes him do so. Nino doesn’t know for he has so many things he has yet to understand about his maker. He wants to begin understanding more tonight, but even from his minimal experience with humans he’s certain this is the type of conversation that has to be mutual for both parties. He will only have answers as long as he’s asking the right questions.  
  
“So ask,” Aiba prompts, giving him a small smile. “Ask because if I get too drunk to answer, you’ll lose your chance. I told you before: you can ask me anything.”  
  
Nino gives that claim a bit of thought. The reason why he never really managed to corner Aiba until today is primarily because of his rather complicated schedule as a pleasure model. Aiba keeps up with his promise of coming whenever Nino calls for him, and yet this is only the fifth time they met in private. All of their previous meetings happened in his apartment, but they never really talked about whatever Aiba’s keeping mum about since their arrival in the colony because, well. Aiba’s pretty good at dodging questions, as good as Nino is, and he thinks it’s an Aiba Masaki trait simply passed on to him.  
  
But now he’s not dodging anything and is welcoming all kinds of query, so Nino jumps at the chance.  
  
“Why did we leave Earth?” is what he chooses to ask first. He has a feeling everything else will unfold with this question, that this is exactly the question that will get the ball rolling.  
  
Aiba leans back on his chair, looking at anywhere else but him. Nino can sense his hesitation. He’s been designed to detect even the slightest hints of discomfort from his companion, after all. But he waits because he knows Aiba is not running away now. He gives the man time to recollect his thoughts and keep his emotions in check, because whatever the reason behind leaving Earth was, it is something Aiba himself isn’t fond of remembering.  
  
In a way, Nino feels something strange being the cause of all the recalling Aiba’s doing. He can’t define it and he files it as an emotion he ‘felt when I was asking for the truth’.  
  
“Because we had to,” Aiba says after a moment, taking another sip of the Mensan drink. “I’m retired, as you know. I didn’t have to tell you about that; I designed you to know everything about me because I didn’t want to hide anything about me from you.” Aiba blinks. “But I kind of forgot to input my birthday,” he adds.  
  
Nino tilts his head at that. “And yet you’re hiding everything about me?”  
  
Aiba takes a deep breath, setting his glass down the table. He looks at everything but Nino’s piercing gaze before he lets out an “I’m sorry for that, Nino. I really am.”  
  
Nino asks the only thing he can think of. “Why?” It can mean a lot of things, he realizes. Why are you hiding everything about me when I know nearly everything about you? Why are you sorry? Why do you feel that way towards me?  
  
Aiba drags both hands over his face, taking deep breaths. Nino realizes it’s the human action for preparing themselves. He has seen it when he had to interact with those who are nervous and uncomfortable with the fact they’re surrounded by machines. Not everyone is as accepting as Aiba and as Kyoko, and he’s had his fair share of clients whom he had to worm his way through in order to get past their reservations towards him.  
  
Aiba squares his shoulders, shooting him a determined look. He downs his whiskey in one gulp and places the glass back on the table, and Nino straightens in preparation for what’s coming.  
  
“We’re not here, you know?” Aiba says, looking around before extending his arms. “The two of us are not here.”  
  
Nino frowns. He is baffled once more. “I don’t understand.”  
  
Aiba seems to expect that, placing both hands on his knees. “We’re not here in Praximus. You’re not here, I’m not here. Or rather, the both of us aren’t supposed to be here. For all my acquaintances in Earth know, I’m currently in one of the mining colonies at Regulus Stargate.”  
  
“And me?” Nino asks, taking a sip of his sherry. “Where am I supposed to be?”  
  
Aiba opens his mouth only to close it again, and something flashes in his eyes. He looks extremely hesitant and uncomfortable that he doesn’t meet Nino’s eyes for a long while.  
  
What Aiba says next makes Nino stop and just stare at his engineer.  
  
“Destroyed.”  
  
Destroyed. Nino repeats the word in his head. It’s only his first year in Praximus—no, he hasn’t even turned a year old. His incept date is this year on the seventeenth of June, and being a replicant means he knows his own lifespan. He has four years to do what he was designed to do, to put Aiba Masaki’s program to the test.  
  
He hasn’t even turned a year old and yet he’s not supposed to be given a chance? What Aiba’s telling him is that he wasn’t supposed to be here, he wasn’t supposed to be a pleasure model in the pleasure district of Praximus V. He wasn’t supposed to meet Kyoko and learn from her as much as he wasn’t supposed to meet Aiba and ask the truth from him. He wasn’t supposed to be friends with his fellow pleasure type Keiko, and now Nino wonders if it’s the same for her too.  
  
“Am I the only one?” he finds himself asking, and Aiba shakes his head slowly.  
  
“You remember when I told you to never mention your series and whoever developed you to anyone?” Aiba asks, and Nino nods. He remembers everything; he’s designed to remember everything in pinpoint accuracy. He can still remember the temperature in Praximus when Aiba told him that.  
  
Aiba looks at him with sad eyes, and Nino can tell because while the man is smiling, it doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s heard of the expression from some of his human clients. It’s apparently a negative thing, something they don’t like to see when they’re with their kind or even in the company of pleasure models.  
  
“Your series was cancelled,” Aiba explains, a finger stroking the rim of the empty whiskey glass. “Cancelled but they told us too late. You guys were ready. We were going to wake you up for a demonstration to the department, but they came and told us that wasn’t happening.”  
  
Nino thinks of anything to say but like always, he comes up with just one, the one thing he asked before. “Why?”  
  
Aiba wouldn’t meet his eyes anymore. “Because another team developed something else.”  
  
Something else. Aiba won’t say it, but Nino knows what it means. Someone better, someone more superior than he’ll ever be. Another team in the same department in the corporation managed to come up with a pleasure type series deemed to be far more advanced than Nino’s series. Aiba and his team never got to showcase their work, and Nino wonders how many years did Aiba work on him only for the corporation to tell him that they didn’t need him.  
  
“The others?” he finds himself asking in a small voice despite no one else hearing them. He doesn’t want to elaborate, but he knows Aiba understands what he’s talking about.  
  
He hears Aiba sigh. “I didn’t stay long enough to find out.”  
  
“Why not?” he asks almost immediately because his confusion is piling up and he has to get rid of them despite the gravity of the truth Aiba’s divulging to him after so many times of dodging. Nino can’t say he prepared himself for this because he thinks nothing could have prepared himself for any of it, especially to hear it from Aiba’s own lips.  
  
“I didn’t want to do what they were asking me to do. Not anymore. Not after so many years of following every single regulation and modification requirement. They—” Aiba pauses, worrying his bottom lip. He meets Nino’s stare and Nino’s sure that’s sadness he can see. “They went too far that time and I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I’ve had enough.”  
  
Nino stares at his untouched sherry and how its amber color appears darker given the lack of proper lighting. “They asked you, didn’t they?” he says slowly, knowing Aiba’s looking at him as he continues to stare at his drink. “They asked you to cut the wire.” He’s not asking this time because he knows. He knows it as much as he knows his serial number, the one he can’t tell to anyone who’s not Aiba.  
  
This time Nino looks up. “But you didn’t,” he says quietly, and Aiba flashes him a small smile. “You didn’t because I’m here. Why?” Wouldn’t it be easier, Nino wants to say, to just do as they asked and try once more? Come up with another development that’s far more improved, a Ninomiya Kazunari version two, probably? Wouldn’t it be easier to do as the corporation asked and continue bioengineering?  
  
But he doesn’t say any of these things because he thinks Aiba understands. Aiba seems to be really sensitive when it comes to things having underlying meanings, seems really perceptive. It’s a trait he shares with Nino, and Nino is sure the only reason he’s that perceptive and that sensitive is that Aiba is, too.  
  
He hears Aiba hum in thought. “You’d wonder about that, wouldn’t you?” he murmurs to himself but Nino catches it. Aiba turns around and calls for the bartender to order another Mensan whiskey, and he turns to Nino with a different expression than the one Nino identified as sadness.  
  
“Because I didn’t want to,” Aiba finally says, looking at him. “Someday you’ll find that that’s a suitable answer for most things, that the reason why you didn’t do one thing is that you didn’t want to. It wasn’t what I wanted and wasn’t what I hoped for. So I left.”  
  
Aiba’s Mensan whiskey arrives and Nino waits until the bartender is back on the counter before he speaks. “And you took me with you.”  
  
“Yeah. Couldn’t leave you there, not with all that corporation politics going on.” Aiba raises his glass towards him in a toast before taking a sip of it, wincing a little when he does.  
  
“I don’t remember any of that happening,” he admits, and Aiba just nods knowingly.  
  
“I made sure of that. I did something to your program so you’d only wake up when we’re in our destination because I didn’t want you to see what I saw.”  
  
This time, Nino frowns. “Why not?”  
  
Aiba meets his eyes, fiddling with his glass. “Because I didn’t want you to hate humans.” He smiles, and Nino can only stare at his face for he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t think he ever will. Here’s a man who ran away from his home planet because the corporation he worked for asked him to dismantle something he created. A man who was betrayed by the corporation he believed in, because why would he work for them if they didn’t find their ideals convincing and aligned with his? Aiba clearly devoted his time, his effort, his services to the corporation only for them to trample down on the one thing he worked hard for.  
  
And the man didn’t hesitate to drop everything and leave, taking his creation with him and not doing what they asked him to do. Aiba has every right to hate the corporation after everything they did to him, after everything they made him do. And yet he doesn’t; he doesn’t have anything as strong as hate for the corporation that betrayed him and Nino can tell because Aiba’s transparent that way.  
  
“I didn’t want you to be angry at them for what they did to me, to you, to all of us. Not all humans are like that. I didn’t want you to think of my kind that way because there’s more to us than that. It’s just that we have the tendency to be cruel to things we consider to be lesser than us, especially towards those we created with our own hands,” Aiba explains, and Nino listens, not knowing what else to say. He doesn’t think he can say anything anymore. “And yet I’m telling you, Nino, that not all humans are like that. Most probably are, given the history of replicant ban many years ago in the past, but things are changing now and they’re changing for what I like to think the better so I wanted you to see things in that way. It’s so easy to become angry at what people throw at you especially when you don’t deserve it. But that won’t solve anything and I wanted you to understand that at the very least.”  
  
He suddenly remembers Kyoko. Different but the same, she said back then, and Nino finally understands. Humans are so different in their perspectives regarding those bioengineered when their kind are the engineers themselves. They’re all humans but there are those who are like the corporation, those who have no hesitation in shutting down replicants because they’re nothing but machines to them, and yet there are those who choose to turn their back and declare they’ve had enough. Being human means they possess the flaws of humanity as a whole, and yet the way they handle those flaws differ from one human to the next.  
  
Different but the same.  
  
Nino can only look at the man who programmed him and whisked him away far from Earth and from the Regilian colonies. The man who ensured Nino gets to have a chance even if everyone else around him told him Nino had no right to.  
  
“You had every right,” he says, leaving the ‘to hate them’ unsaid.  
  
Aiba nods, a small smile on his lips. “I had, yes. But that didn’t mean I should.”  
  
Nino lets the silence linger before settling for another thing that’s bugging him. “The other development,” he begins, and Aiba simply looks at him and waits for him to continue. “What was their series type and who made them?”  
  
Aiba takes another sip of his whiskey and winces at the burn of it before wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “X4-6 A,” he mouths, and Nino’s eyes narrow. “As for who made them, I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t know or you’re not telling me?” Nino asks, and this time Aiba lets out a little laugh.  
  
“Should’ve known you’d be that sharp. But no, I really don’t know. I didn’t bother to find out.”  
  
Nino frowns, cocking his head to the side. “Why not?”  
  
Aiba looks at him with very determined eyes. “Because I didn’t want to hate them. It wasn’t their fault.”  
  
Nino leans back on his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s overwhelmed by many things he never felt before. The gravity of his origin only sinks in now, the weight of Aiba’s sacrifice only became clear tonight. He feels grateful but at the same time awful since he made Aiba tell him these things. He had to know, yes, but that doesn’t remove the feeling of something heavy crushing him inside. He can’t define it and he wonders if he’ll ever do so.  
  
Mostly, though, he feels extreme admiration for his maker, who made his choice and turned his back on it without a second thought when he realized it wasn’t what he wanted. Nino doesn’t think he’ll ever find another human like Aiba in his short life.  
  
Aiba who made him see things beyond the surface, who asked him not to dwell on anger and hatred when Aiba himself had every right to feel that way. Aiba who made sure he won’t remember anything regarding Earth and chose not to scrap him when it would have been the easier choice.  
  
“Aiba-shi,” he says, and Aiba looks up.  
  
“That’s the first time you called me that,” Aiba says, his face breaking into a smile.  
  
Nino nods, letting out a little smile of his own. “From now on I’m calling you that.” He says it in a slightly mocking voice, something to lighten the mood. He masks the intent behind it, that he’s referring to Aiba in that way because tonight is the night Ninomiya Kazunari of Praximus V found a human he can never compare with anyone else.  
  
Aiba has his head tilted, waiting for him to say something, and Nino flashes him a grin. “It’s Christmas,” he informs Aiba, his inner timer telling him it’s exactly seven minutes and twelve seconds past midnight. “It’s Christmas so,” he pauses, pointing at Aiba’s glass, “would you like a refill?”  
  
Aiba’s face lights up, and he stands up from his chair to wrap his arms around Nino. “You’re paying? Are you seriously paying? That’s new!” he exclaims before calling the attention of the bartender and ordering Mensan whiskey for two.  
  
When Nino looks at him questioningly, Aiba grins. “It’s Christmas, you’ve got to let go of the sherry to try something stronger with me.”  
  
Aiba returns to his seat and keeps the smile on his face, and Nino supposes that getting drunk with the guy to whom he owes his life to is not a bad way to spend his first Christmas. He sighs, and for the first time in that night, he shares a toast with retired engineer Aiba Masaki as they drink together one of the strongest alcoholic beverages the vestiges of space has to offer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say I forgot about this but the truth is last week and this week are both set to eat me alive, so there.

Nino finds a different side to his pleasure-giving career after his Christmas conversation with Aiba, and that is to excel in his services so that the better development will surely hear of his name.  
  
It’s his pride talking. Since that night in the obscure bar where he tasted Mensan whiskey for the first time, he uses his every night in the pleasure district to make sure he is the replicant that is worthy of Aiba’s efforts, of Aiba’s sacrifices. He doesn’t say it to Aiba because he isn’t sure how the human will take it, but he gives his best in what he’s been designed for because he wants to keep his maker proud and to keep his promise of showing everyone what he’s got, because he’s proud of who he is and especially of the one who made him.  
  
He doesn’t think most replicants in the same business can say the same, and he proves this when he finally meets him for the first time.  
  
X4-6 A.  
  
Nino first saw him and they didn’t meet back then because he had commitments and only saw him in passing, but he knew it was him. It happened two months before his birthday. That chance encounter wasn’t particularly special for Nino’s standards. For Nino, any noteworthy meetings involve credits and lots of it, and seeing as there was nothing of the sort on the night he first saw the better model, he files it in his memory bank as ‘nothing much’.  
  
Nino remembers every bit of detail about him during that time though, how his choice of clothing vastly differs from Nino’s, how he moves with grace and fluidity, making his every action stand out. Keiko nudged him back then, an elbow to his side.  
  
“That’s him, you know,” Keiko informed him with a grin, and Nino had to look at the sea of people surrounding Space Cadet, a members-only bar and far from cheap. Nino is a member too, of course, but he doesn’t like the ambience it has because he feels he’s being observed in every direction, in his every action.  
  
“Who?” he asked, and that was when Nino saw him for the first time. Coiffed hair, sharp cheekbones, large features with large, captivating brown eyes and distinct eyebrows. He stood out in the crowd because of the way he carried himself: full of confidence, elegance, and overflowing with charm.  
  
All in all, Nino was impressed. He expected nothing less, considering that this was the supposed better model, better than him and his other X3 friends. X4-6 A was the very image of a pleasure type, and whoever created him had made sure of that.  
  
Keiko giggled at that time, slapping him lightly on the arm. “Of course you don’t know, you don’t care about anything. That’s him, remember that time Haruka-chan told us someone’s having three clients at the same time in the top floor of the Sullivan Lounge? That was him. He’s the one.”  
  
Nino remembered. Sullivan Lounge is one of those places he only gets to visit when he has the highest paying clients, the top of the economy. He has only been to the Lounge’s top floor when it’s his Lacertan client he’s with. Top floor of the establishment ensures maximum privacy, and he remembers grinning at Keiko’s statement.  
  
This guy had three clients simultaneously in the top floor? Nino finds that he is no longer merely curious about X4-6 A, but definitely interested.  
  
“Latest model?” he remembers asking Keiko, and her eyes shone with meaning.  
  
“Certainly younger than you and me, no doubt. I’m on my second year this year. Who knows if he’s the latest? He probably is though, look at him.”  
  
It takes Nino a month and twenty-one days (and sixteen hours and fifty-six seconds) to spot him again, and it’s in the same diner where he celebrated his first birthday and Aiba’s thirty-first. Nino honestly didn’t think he’d find him here of all places because he looks like someone who dines in the most private and the most expensive establishments.  
  
Nino finds himself pleasantly surprised.  
  
He’s alone, X4-6 A (Nino has come to refer to him as such despite not being so sure, but he figures he will know for sure any moment now), and Nino takes that as his chance to slide in the same booth and he almost laughs at the immediate frown on his fellow pleasure model’s face when he does so.  
  
But he doesn’t because he takes his time to observe X4-6 A up close, how his skin isn’t exactly perfect and therefore too close to a human, how his eyebrows that come together add such a fierce look on him, even an intimidating one.  
  
Nino is not intimidated. Since Aiba gave him the series name, he’s been wondering when he’ll get to meet one just to see what it has to offer, just to discover for himself their differences. Not because he feels envious. That’s an emotion he has yet to feel but something he heard from many of his clients. He just wants to see because like most things, he’s curious about it.  
  
“Who are you?” X4-6 A asks, somewhat rudely, and Nino supposes it’s the frown on his face that makes it seem so. For all he knows this guy probably didn’t mean it that way, it’s just that his frown combined with his rather sharp facial features give that impression.  
  
“Are you an X4-6 A?” Nino finds himself asking in a soft voice, and he smiles when the guy raises an eyebrow at his casual ignorance of the question. He remembers Aiba telling him that he may have forgotten to input proper human decorum upon first meet, and he grins wider.  
  
Pretty convenient, he thinks, that Aiba forgot that. He can see how it’s throwing this guy off.  
  
The other replicant places his fork back on his plate and Nino observes how it didn’t make a sound. This guy is very light on his actions, very precise, every movement thought out and collected, planned. Very different from the spontaneity of Nino’s design, the way he considers nearly everything as not part of his business unless it directly involves him, something even Keiko finds amusing about him. Nino’s unconventional; he’s had many clients and fellow replicants say that about him, and he supposes nothing else can be expected from a robot whose series got cancelled and wasn’t even supposed to be here.  
  
“What has that got to do with anything? Who are you?” the guy asks again, and this time Nino lets out a little laugh before calling over the waitress, Xindee, an Antlian native he’s grown close to given the frequency of his visits. He tells her he’ll have the usual, and he waits until she’s in the kitchen before turning back to the replicant before him.  
  
X4-6 A still has an eyebrow raised, and Nino finds that he might actually associate the idea of quirked eyebrows to this guy after this. He extends a hand, something that warrants a frown from the other replicant.  
  
“Ninomiya Kazunari,” he says, finally introducing himself and remembering what Aiba taught him, and it takes seven point three seconds of staring at his outstretched hand before the guy takes it in his own and gives him a handshake.  
  
“Matsumoto Jun,” the other replicant answers, voice as cold and as distant as ever despite his gesture of politeness. However something in Matsumoto’s expression changes, and it takes a beat for Nino to realize what it is: recognition.  
  
He smirks, and Matsumoto’s eyes narrow before letting go. “You’re him, then. The one they call Nino.”  
  
Nino somehow wishes Aiba’s here to hear all of this, that X4-6 A has heard of his creation’s name. He keeps the smirk and bats his eyelashes, something he learned from Keiko along with an explanation of “It’s the mocking type of innocence, something that will suit you since you’re a little mischievous.” With the way Matsumoto’s looking at him, he’s sure Keiko was right.  
  
“You’ve heard of me?” he asks innocently, and Matsumoto’s eyebrow shoots up again.  
  
“I have.”  
  
His responses are curt, direct to the point, and offer no air of familiarity nor friendliness. Nino knows this is not the behavior he shows his clients. If he has the ability to handle three high-paying clients simultaneously in the Sullivan Lounge, then his attitude towards his share of clientele is not the same attitude he’s showing Nino.  
  
Nino wonders how Matsumoto can have a different side to his personality, how the way he interacts with beings he categorized as ‘clients’ and ‘non-clients’ differ in the coldness, the aloofness. Then again, it might be because Nino just slid into his booth without warning, acting all familiar with him when Nino’s interrupting his very late dinner (of salad and other green leafy things from Earth, something Nino refuses to eat if he can help it).  
  
In Nino’s defense, it’s the Aiba in him that made him do it.  
  
“So are you him? X4-6 A,” Nino says before Xindee arrives with his platter of steak, and he smiles at her in thanks before watching her walk back to the counter.  
  
Matsumoto resumes with his salad eating after thirty-four seconds of staring at Nino’s steak platter. “Does it matter? If you’re here to find the person who designed me, I’m afraid I cannot tell you.”  
  
That makes Nino pause in his steak slicing. He didn’t expect Matsumoto to answer his question (and the indirect way of saying yes, he is X4-6 A), and he didn’t expect the ounce of bitterness he heard in the way Matsumoto said it.  
  
“You don’t know who made you,” Nino murmurs, and Matsumoto looks up at him, all sharp features and piercing eyes.  
  
“No, I don’t,” Matsumoto says before puncturing a cabbage with his fork and putting it in his mouth. Nino notices the marks on surrounding his mouth, signs of imperfection in humans that probably adds to Matsumoto’s charm and popularity. If there’s anything Nino has come to learn about the clientele, it’s that most of them thoroughly enjoy seeing imperfection on pleasure models because it makes them so similar to humans in appearance. He has no doubt that Matsumoto’s large features combined with the beauty marks Nino can see even on the sides of his neck just contribute to his favorability, to his standing in the competition.  
  
And yet, Matsumoto has heard of him. That makes Nino smile, considering that Matsumoto’s pretty popular in their business, a name he has heard of from his fellow replicants. He wonders when Matsumoto arrived on Praximus, and who’s the older one: him or Matsumoto. He thinks it’s him, but he can’t tell for sure unless he asks for Matsumoto’s incept date and the guy offers it.  
  
Unlikely, now that he gives it thought. Matsumoto only seems to tolerate his presence because it’s polite to do so, and it will attract attention if he makes Nino go away. Nino now understands why Matsumoto is in a diner that doesn’t suit him. It’s because he’s trying to be unpredictable, probably wanting to have dinner in peace.  
  
Well, Nino supposes, with looks and skills like that, the guy probably can’t have a moment’s rest until someone calls for his services again. In a way, Nino feels sorry for him.  
  
“And you?” he hears Matsumoto ask and he looks up, tilting his head in question. Matsumoto’s trying to have a conversation with him, probably to know him better because Nino has an inkling they both heard of the old Terran saying of ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’.  
  
“And me what?” Nino asks back despite knowing what Matsumoto’s talking about. He just wants to see the guy look so close to being annoyed with him because he wants to test the limits of Matsumoto Jun’s patience while he’s at it. Who knows when he’ll get the chance again?  
  
Matsumoto fixes him with a look, close to a glare even, and Nino keeps the innocent smile on his face and pretends that Matsumoto has to elaborate. “Your engineer. Do you know him?”  
  
Nino shoves a piece of steak in his mouth and keeps his eyes on Matsumoto. “Yes, I do.”  
  
Matsumoto looks so close to saying something about him talking before swallowing his food and Nino waits for it, but instead Matsumoto’s eyes narrow. “How is that possible?” he asks, and Nino licks his lips for bits of leftover steak sauce.  
  
“Well, it’s a strange world,” he says, letting his inner Aiba Masaki take over. If Aiba was here, what would he say? What would he say to the model the corporation deemed to be better than the one he painstakingly created? What would he say to the reason why he left Earth and took Nino with him?  
  
Nino smiles, thinking of Aiba and his decisions, his inability to wink, his rather boisterous inebriated self. “But I guess I’m just lucky,” he tells Matsumoto because it’s the truth. It’s the only form of truth he can offer X4-6 A now, given the reality behind their association. What may be meeting a fellow replicant on the job for Matsumoto is meeting _the_ fellow replicant on the job for Nino.  
  
“Are you proud to be something he created?” Matsumoto asks him suddenly, and Nino ponders on his choice of words. Something instead of someone, further highlighting that they’re machines created by human hands, by engineers. He wonders what kind of human environment did Matsumoto experience for him to view himself and the rest of his kind as things instead of people.  
  
Nino finds that he cannot fault Matsumoto for that kind of mindset because he doesn’t know whatever it is Matsumoto experienced for him to think of it that way, a manner so vastly different from what Aiba made sure Nino would see. He doesn’t know enough to say something about it.  
  
He wonders, briefly, if this is what makes Matsumoto Jun a better model, the one that got the corporation’s approval stamp. If him being cognizant of what he is compared to humans is what made him far more superior than any pleasure models released and developed.  
  
“Yes,” Nino says finally answering Matsumoto’s question. He watches how confusion shows in Matsumoto’s face, how it’s so evident. “Yes, I can say I’m proud of that fact, that he’s the person who created me.”  
  
Matsumoto says nothing, only looks at him with mixed confusion and interest, and Nino gives his fellow replicant his friendliest smile. Nothing suggestive or mocking, but similar to the ones Aiba frequently gives him. He catches Matsumoto’s initial shock when he sees an eyebrow twitch, and he keeps the smile as he leans forward.  
  
“Would you like to meet him?” he offers, and Matsumoto’s frown grows deeper. “The guy who made me, I mean.”  
  
“He’s in Praximus?” Matsumoto asks, slightly incredulous, and Nino just nods.  
  
Or in one of its moons, he thinks belatedly, but still Praximus V.  
  
“You can meet him if you have some things you want to know, some things only an engineer can know and can tell you,” Nino offers, and Matsumoto doesn’t say anything anymore, finishing his meal in silence.  
  
When Nino’s pad beeps with a reminder that he has an appointment in ten minutes in the Praximus Stargate Club with his Lacertan client, he looks at Matsumoto and slides a credit chip across the table, along with an aluminum chip containing his contact information.  
  
Matsumoto frowns at the two items before meeting his eyes, and Nino simply smiles before sliding out of the booth. “Call me Nino. And the offer stands for as long as we’re in the same business.”  
  
He moves to leave, but he hears Matsumoto call out his name quietly, a small “Nino” that he manages to hear despite the conversations from other diner patrons surrounding them.  
  
“One last thing,” Matsumoto murmurs, and Nino stops in his tracks and turns to him. “Luck, you said earlier. Do you believe in that?”  
  
Nino looks at him, at Matsumoto Jun of the X4-6 A series, and his leftover steak that proves he just shared a meal with the replicant that sent him to Praximus V along with Aiba. He thinks of how all of this shouldn’t be possible and yet it all happened.  
  
“Yes,” he says, and Matsumoto looks at him, like he’s trying to gauge Nino’s honestly. Nino can only hope it’s conveyed enough. “Yes, Jun-kun, I actually do.”  
  
He leaves Matsumoto after that and hails a hovercar to take him to the Stargate Club.  
  
\--  
  
The first thing Nino does upon getting home is to send a note to Aiba containing only five words: ‘Call me. I met him.’  
  
He’s preparing for bed when his pad beeps, a video call request from Aiba, and he quickly flicks his finger to accept as he sits on his bed with legs crossed. A holo of code appears followed by Aiba’s face, his usual smiling face no matter the time or the day or the circumstance, and Nino tilts his head in acknowledgement and mild amusement.  
  
“Tell me about him,” Aiba says, and Nino does, mentioning every bit he noticed. That Matsumoto Jun doesn’t dress himself like Ninomiya Kazunari does, that he walks with precise and measured footsteps and moves in calculated gestures, that everything about him is refined, collected, almost too perfect except for his artificial lines of flesh that were patterned to be too close to a human's given its flaws and noticeable imperfections.  
  
Aiba just listens, not stopping him even when he gets to Matsumoto Jun’s eyebrows, how his face can look far more menacing than what he probably intended given his striking features.  
  
“He asked me if I believed in luck, Aiba-shi,” Nino says, fingers playing with his covers. He has his pad on his lap and he’s staring at a hologram of Aiba Masaki’s face in the middle of the night, and he’s talking about the one android that made their lives in Praximus V happen in the first place.  
  
“And what did you tell him?” Aiba asks, looking genuinely interested. Nino watches out for any sign of discomfort on Aiba’s face, any indication that this is a sore topic for him, but there’s nothing to see aside from Aiba’s curiosity.  
  
Curiosity he successfully transferred to me, Nino thinks.  
  
“I told him that I actually do,” Nino answers, flashing Aiba a small smile. “He looked surprised, like he didn’t understand. But you understand, don’t you? That I felt lucky to be there sitting in front of him and watching as he meticulously ate his salad and side-eyed my hamburger steak? Is that odd? For me to feel that way?”  
  
Aiba looks thoughtful at the question, and Nino waits. If there’s anyone who can answer his question, it’s Aiba.  
  
“No,” Aiba says after a moment, returning his smile. “No, I don’t think it’s odd. I think it’s just right for you to feel that, just appropriate.”  
  
Appropriate, Aiba said. The fact that his maker has nothing negative to say about how he handled the situation makes him feel something he never felt before, something close to amusement and yet not quite it.  
  
It’s something he’s ninety-nine point two percent sure that Matsumoto Jun has never felt, and instead of feeling like he can gloat about it, he finds himself feeling sorry for Matsumoto for the second time but for an entirely different reason than the first.  
  
“Nino,” Aiba says, coaxing him from his thoughts. He looks at his engineer questioningly. “Do you hate him?”  
  
Nino thinks about the question. Does he hate Matsumoto Jun? Does he hate X4-6 A, the only X4-6 A that got sent to this part of the galaxy, here in Triangulum, of all places? Does he hate that Matsumoto is in the same place as him and Aiba, that his presence can possibly remind Aiba of the things on Earth he tried his best to leave behind and to not let Nino experience in any way? Does he hate the idea of Matsumoto Jun being far more superior than he’ll ever be according to the corporation standards?  
  
What is hate, anyway, aside from the emotion Aiba didn’t want him to feel? What is hate aside from the only emotion Aiba had every right to feel after the people he’d trusted turned their backs on him as if he never managed to contribute anything for the betterment of bioengineering? What is hate apart from the emotion than he has every right to feel towards Matsumoto Jun and yet the only emotion he can’t imagine himself ever feeling?  
  
Is he even programmed for it, he wonders? Did Aiba program him to feel such strong surges of emotion when Aiba poured every bit of his humanity into Nino’s program? If Aiba himself doesn’t seem to exercise what hate is, does that mean Nino is incapable of it, too?  
  
No, he’s not incapable of it, he realizes. If Aiba designed him to have the inability to feel it then that would mean Aiba designed him to be less than humans, and that’s not possible, not with the way Aiba treats him and with the way Aiba’s honest with him. Aiba views him as an equal, which is probably why he refused to cut the wire in the first place. For Aiba, killing Nino would mean killing a bit of himself, and Nino knows despite not asking about it because Aiba designed him to know every little thing about his maker, things only he can detect and understand without words because he is, in every wire, in every conduit, and in every circuit, an Aiba Masaki creation, Aiba Masaki the bioengineer’s first and only project.  
  
So he can feel hate. He can feel anger, resentment, he can be vengeful even, if he puts his mind to it and allows such negativities to remain and fester inside.  
  
Like any other human.  
  
But does he hate Matsumoto Jun? He thinks of Matsumoto, one he immediately called Jun-kun even without Matsumoto’s approval, one he immediately offered to introduce to Aiba without hesitation. Does he hate him for being who he is, the company-declared and factory-issued better pleasure model than the ones designed by Aiba and his team? Does he have the right to hate Jun for who he is and how that inadvertently shaped who Nino himself is, who Nino turned out to be?  
  
Is it right to treat everything that happened to Nino and his engineer Aiba as Matsumoto Jun’s fault?  
  
He meets Aiba’s eyes, and he sees patience there and the absence of judgment, like always.  
  
“No,” he says after a long while, after giving it a lot of thought. “No, Aiba-shi. I don’t hate him.”  
  
He squares his shoulders, staring at Aiba’s face, his infinitely kind expression that is the first thing Nino saw when he first opened his eyes, the first facial expression he ever saw on a human being. “Is that weird?” he asks quietly, expressing his doubt over what he feels. “Is it weird that I don’t hate him?”  
  
He knows he doesn’t hate Matsumoto Jun just because he came into being, just because someone created him at the same time as Aiba’s team made the X3 series. It’s not his fault, nor is it the fault of those who made him. There’s no one to blame, and yet he understands why Aiba asked the question. It’s easy to hate when a reminder of an awful truth is right before your eyes. It’s easy to hate given their history with the better model, so easy to put the blame on his shoulders.  
  
But is it right to do so? He doesn’t think so, and he thinks Aiba feels the same, with his choice of not knowing the names of the team who developed X4-6 A because it’s so easy to give in to something as negative and as powerful as hate when the cause of injustice is right in your face. The fact that Aiba prevented that from happening altogether suggests that he understands what Nino feels, and that he shares the same sentiment.  
  
Aiba lets out a smile, a knowing one, something he mostly uses on Nino (89.4% of the time, he calculates).  
  
“No,” Aiba tells him, never looking away from his eyes. “No, it’s not weird. Rather than weird, I’d like to call it another thing.”  
  
Nino blinks, and he keeps his gaze on Aiba’s honest eyes. “Which is?”  
  
Aiba gives him a grin this time, a reassuring one that never fails to make him feel that things are all right despite his inner calculations telling him the odds regarding the possibility of things going awry. Over his computer brain, he finds himself believing in Aiba Masaki more, and he waits.  
  
“Being brave, Nino,” Aiba tells him. “That’s how I’d like to call it.”  
  
\--  
  
One of his clients, an heiress from Earth who only answers to the nickname Becky, sent him a request that had him staring at Matsumoto Jun’s face when he opened the door after Nino rang the bell to one of the presidential suites in the Pegasus Dwarf Lounge.  
  
“Nino!” he hears Becky call out somewhere inside the room, and he smiles as Matsumoto steps aside to let him in. “Took you long enough. Jun-kun here kept asking me who’s the other person I called and I kept telling him to just wait.”  
  
Joint request then, Nino realizes. It’s his first time, but when he looks at Jun’s face to gauge any similar reaction, there’s nothing there but confidence. It’s only been four point eight weeks since he last saw Matsumoto Jun, and that was a time long enough for Nino to get used to referring to him as Jun-kun like Becky does. Becky says it with affection while Nino says his with what he hopes is a friendly aura. He’s not here to compete, anyway. He’s here to please a client, one that apparently requested for both of their services on the same night.  
  
Exactly what you would expect from a traveling heiress, Nino thinks. Always looking for something new and never settling for the standard when they can clearly go higher. He never handled any joint requests before because it was hard to find a replicant who charges the same hourly rate as he does (he’s not cheap), but he supposes with the competition he seems to have with Jun and with the way Jun knows his name, their rates are most likely the same or close to each other.  
  
“You’re bored with me already, Becky?” he teases as he sits on the carpeted floor below her feet. He takes one of her feet in his hands and massages her ankle, something that makes her sigh. “Bored so you called someone else to join in?”  
  
Becky laughs, hitting him with a throw pillow. “Instead of bored, I’ll say I’m just looking to add a bit of excitement. I’ve been with you more than enough to know what you can do, Nino.” She turns to Jun who sits on the floor and takes her hand, kissing the white of her wrist. “And I have to say that I became interested in the idea of seeing what the both of you are capable of, after I availed Jun-kun’s services.”  
  
Ah, Nino thinks. He gets it now. Becky asked for Matsumoto Jun, the Matsumoto Jun of Praximus V probably after spending the night with Nino, just to know what the fuss is about. To be able to afford Praximus’ pleasure district’s highest-paid pleasure models is no ordinary feat. Nino wonders how many credits she’s intending to spend seeing as it’s the both of them in her room now, in a high-profile room no less.  
  
Pegasus Dwarf Lounge is the popular establishment for those who are open about their preferences, for those who have nothing to hide. Becky, now that Nino thinks about it, exudes confidence the same way Jun does, and Nino can easily see what drew her to him. She likes Nino’s way with words and the way he carries himself, she told him that. But what she likes about Jun, that’s something Nino still has to gradually discover for tonight.  
  
“But first,” Becky says, withdrawing her hand from Jun’s grip and her foot from Nino’s, standing up from the couch she’s sitting on in one fluid movement, “you boys are to join me for dinner.”  
  
Nino grins. He always liked how unpredictable Becky can be, how she can appear distracted only for her to regain focus in the next moment. It makes her one of his favorite clients to entertain, and from the way Jun is looking at her, he’s 76.3% sure Jun’s fond of her too.  
  
He watches as Jun offers her an arm to the dining room without a word, something that makes her smile and turn to Nino expectantly. He smirks. “Shall I pull your chair too, Becky-san?” he asks as he approaches the pair, offering Becky his arm.  
  
She laughs, her head thrown back. “One of the things I really love about you, Nino,” she says as they walk towards the table full of expensive-looking cuisine (he can name Andromedan, Muscan, and Orion), “is that tongue of yours.”  
  
Nino laughs, catching on to her meaning. Jun surprises him by smiling, and Nino thinks it actually looks good on him, if only it reaches his eyes.  
  
He thinks he might be right with his calculation of 99.2% about Matsumoto Jun feeling no ounce of happiness, one that’s not amusement but rather a genuine mirth, something Nino last felt when he saw the look of pride in Aiba’s eyes. He wonders what kind of life Jun is living, if it’s confined to being a pleasure model because he hasn’t been designed to be anything else.  
  
It’s not his place, Nino realizes. Not his place to help Jun on anything, not his place to intervene because to Jun he’s just a fellow replicant on the same job, sitting on the same dining table, entertaining the same client for the night. To Jun, he’s just an equally high-earning pleasure model, popular enough to earn a reputation for himself despite being in Praximus for one year and thirty-three point six days. To Jun, Nino is just someone whom he has to work with for tonight, nothing more.  
  
Nino can’t blame him for that perception, not when Jun remains oblivious to anything, to the truth behind Nino’s origin and his offer to introduce him to Aiba. He knows he can’t fault Jun for adhering to what he’s been designed for; he’s the approved model by the corporation, after all. The fact that he exercises every bit of what his model can offer means that he’s putting the design to good use, doing what it is he’s built for. Nino can’t fault him if he chooses to be that way, because he’s been made that way.  
  
It’s just that Nino wishes, now that he looks at Jun and the way his laughter sounds genuine to human ears but not to replicants built to catch on every bit of a halfhearted reaction, that Jun can get to experience what Nino has experienced so far in Praximus V, thanks to Aiba. He wishes Jun can get to understand the things around him and not confine himself with what he’s given, never seeking more because he’s supposed to be content with what he has, because he’s been designed that way.  
  
Nino doesn’t understand it, but he feels a bit protective over Jun despite not knowing him for long. Maybe it’s the gravity of the truth surrounding them, the truth that binds Jun to him and Aiba. Maybe it’s his human side developing further, showing concern over someone he managed to view as a little brother. Maybe it’s him wishing he can share a bit of what he gets to have with his relationship with Aiba, the easygoing and comfortable relationship he has with the person who made him, something Jun obviously doesn’t have.  
  
Maybe that’s why Nino offered to introduce him to Aiba in the first place.  
  
He thinks on all these things as he watches the motions on Jun’s face, how they both listen to the same story of Becky and her chauffeur and how they react differently to it despite their reaction being the same: the expression Becky obviously expects them to have on their faces—laughter.  
  
So different, Nino thinks as he watches how Jun’s smile is only of amusement and not of happiness, and yet the same.  
  
\--  
  
August 30th is the day Nino first gets a message from Jun. It surprises him in a good way, and he opens the message immediately. He marvels at the way it’s constructed, every word polite and thought out.  
  
Like I’m a client, Nino thinks with a grin.  
  
Jun asks if his offer still stands, and Nino replies with a quick yes, and he proceeds to send a message to Aiba, telling him that they’re meeting a friend in the same diner they celebrated their birthdays in.  
  
He gets a rather enthusiastic confirmation from Aiba almost immediately (OK!!!!!!!!!! with a kiss emoticon that Nino has learned to blatantly ignore from the day he first received it), and he smiles when Jun’s reply comes immediately after Aiba’s. Nino tells him to meet them in the same diner and to have two servings of curry rice ready. He likes hamburger steak, but he doesn’t eat it all the time contrary to popular belief. Aiba’s program can be pretty universal, allowing him to eat a variety of cuisines, be it Terran, Orion, Mensan, Andromedan, and any other place in the corners of space, provided they don’t reach a certain price that his systems will identify as expensive.  
  
Jun, of course, arrives first. It’s not that Nino has the habit of being late. He just knows of Aiba’s tendency to never arrive on time so he tries to match Aiba’s arrival time with his to make the introductions easier. He’s the middleman after all, the guy who offered something of substance to the better model two months and twenty-three days ago (and fifteen hours and twenty-two seconds) that Jun only accepted now. Nino wonders if today is a special day for him. His inner Aiba Masaki is telling him that something’s up with today.  
  
He asks the moment he slides into the booth. “Is today your birthday?”  
  
Matsumoto Jun on the thirtieth of August of the year 2234 is far from the Matsumoto Jun he first saw. No coiffed hair, no fancy pleasure model clothes that make him look like an emperor among their kind. Just his jewelry and a leather jacket thrown over a gray parka. He blinks at Nino’s question and Nino just smiles.  
  
“It’s not a birthday,” Jun tells him, and honestly, Nino expected him to say that, and he can only smile sadly as Jun continues, “it’s an incept date.”  
  
Nino shrugs, leaning against the backrest. “Same thing, don’t you think?” he tries, because Jun obviously doesn’t see things the way he does. He looks human as much as Nino, and yet of the two of them, Nino is beginning to think he’s the more human counterpart rather than Jun.  
  
Jun who seems to like rules, who seems to favor adhering to the strictest set of regulations laid out before him. Nino admires him for it in a way, because it’s something he can never do. His spontaneity is part of Aiba’s design, and his way of handling things is something Aiba definitely passed on to him. He’s still learning, but his way of adapting is vastly different from Jun’s and he knows that Jun is aware of that too.  
  
“No,” Jun says, and Nino just keeps the smile on his face. “No, it’s not the same thing.”  
  
He has expected every single answer Jun has for him, yet it still doesn’t prepare him for the rush of sadness and something akin to pity as he looks at his fellow replicant. Nino wonders if Jun deserved this, this way of upbringing from the corporation, the constant reminder that he is mostly machine and therefore less than a human for his creator is a human. Did he deserve for such a mindset to be ingrained in him to the point he’s in his first year in Praximus and yet he has so many things he sees in a different light?  
  
Nino feels sorry for him, but he knows if he voices any of it out, Jun won’t understand. He has so many things he is yet to understand, and in a way, Nino feels like he’s the elder brother who has to look out for Jun despite Jun being the company-declared better pleasure model.  
  
The irony of it all, Nino thinks.  
  
It’s then that he catches sight of Aiba, and he waves a little to get the man’s attention. Jun doesn’t turn, and Nino watches how Jun focuses on him alone until Aiba slides next to Nino.  
  
For a while no one says anything, and Nino decides to be a little difficult for Jun by not doing the introductions despite being the middleman.  
  
“So you’re Jun-chan!” Aiba suddenly says animatedly, shaking Jun’s hand with a lot of force than necessary before letting go. Nino watches his maker’s enthusiasm with amused eyes, and he tries not to laugh when he sees Jun frowning at the nickname. Nino is prepared to bet nobody ever called him that before, not even the richest clients on his internal roster.  
  
“Who are you?” Jun asks, and Nino remembers that Jun asked him the very same question. Twice, now that he recalls it, and he smiles when Aiba ignores it.  
  
“Hello, Jun-chan!” Aiba says, and Nino hides his smile at the back of his hand.  
  
“What’s his name?” Jun finally asks, turning to him, because Aiba obviously is too excited to finally meet _the_ model to even remember to introduce himself, so Nino does it for him.  
  
“Jun-kun,” he says with a smile before wrapping an arm around Aiba’s shoulders, “this is Aiba Masaki, the human behind the genius that is Ninomiya Kazunari.”  
  
He sees Jun’s eyebrow twitch at the ‘genius’ and he tries not to laugh. “And this, Aiba-shi, as you know, is Matsumoto Jun.”  
  
Aiba just nods, keeping the grin on his face. Aiba is Aiba, and Aiba is the type of person who doesn’t need introductions given his easygoing attitude. He can get overexcited at times but Nino knows it works miracles for even the most uptight humans and replicants so he simply tilts his head and waits for the natural Aiba Masaki charm to undoubtedly work on Matsumoto Jun.  
  
“Aiba-san, then?” Jun asks, and this time Nino can’t stop the snort that comes out. It’s clear that Aiba’s overly friendly nature is getting to Jun, and Nino opts to just sit back and watch how the calm and collected pleasure model handles the enthusiastic ball of energy that is Nino’s engineer.  
  
Aiba grins, and Nino watches how Jun’s eyebrows come together at the sight of it. “Don’t be so formal! You can call me Masaki, you know,” Aiba says, not even the slightest bit put off by Jun’s obvious skepticism towards him. Nino thinks nothing can destroy Aiba’s enthusiasm, not even meeting the better development in the flesh.  
  
It’s admirable, and now that Nino thinks about it, a very Aiba thing to do.  
  
Xindee brings over two plates of curry rice and a plate of salad, and Jun waits for her to take her leave before getting to business.  
  
“I’m an X4-6 A,” Jun says to Aiba, and Nino sneaks a glance towards his maker for any reaction. But Aiba’s still smiling, then he nods, a gesture for Jun to continue. Nino thinks he’s here to watch this whole interaction, this possibility of friendship with the one replicant that made a lot of things possible for him and for his engineer.  
  
The universe is strange.  
  
“I was shipped to the Praximus Stargate immediately after they activated me,” Jun informs them, still not touching his plate of salad. Nino listens to his choice of words, in the same manner he’s sure Aiba does.  
  
Activated, not awoken. He remembers how Aiba told him that he and the rest of the X3 series were going to be awoken. Jun uses a very different term for the same thing, further highlighting his difference in perspective. Nino doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad one, only that there’s this twinge of what humans call pity somewhere inside him.  
  
Maybe he’s more human than Matsumoto Jun at the moment.  
  
Aiba shoves a spoonful of curry rice in his mouth, looking at Jun as he chews. “You have something you want to know, of course. They didn’t tell you much,” Aiba says, and Nino wants to smile at his engineer’s sharpness. Aiba may get ahead of himself 89.3% of the time, but when the situation calls for it, he can adapt just as well as Nino can.  
  
Like maker, like android.  
  
“I don’t know the engineer behind my programming,” Jun tells them, this time he’s meeting Nino’s eyes, and Nino thinks that had the two of them been human, Jun would have been feeling something humans refer to as envy. Nino’s never felt that before, but his systems know it, albeit only in textbook definition. He wonders if he’ll ever feel it.  
  
Aiba leans back in his chair, taking a sip from the glass of water provided. “I can’t tell you about that, Jun-chan,” Aiba says, wetting his lips. Nino watches the 0.5% narrowing of Jun’s eyes, something Aiba won’t catch.  
  
Nino thinks it’ll take time for Jun to be used to the nickname Aiba uses on him despite them only meeting for the first time.  
  
“I can’t tell you because I don’t know them either,” Aiba states, darting a glance at Nino. “You see, I retired before they activated your series.”  
  
Jun frowns at that, and Nino schools his features to not give anything away. Aiba used the same term Jun used for himself, and his systems interpret it as Aiba’s way of respecting Jun’s choices in referring to himself.  
  
“Why did you retire?” Jun asks suddenly, and Nino scoops up a spoonful of curry rice to hide his smile.  
  
He wonders how Aiba will handle such a question, a question so close to the truth. Aiba doesn’t lie; Nino thinks his engineer is actually incapable of lying and he made up for it by making Nino a very convincing one, a “charming bullshitter” as Becky once put it.  
  
He hears Aiba take a deep breath before putting a spoonful of curry rice in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. Aiba hums after. “Because I couldn’t do what I wanted to on Earth, so I went here instead. With Nino.”  
  
Jun looks confused now, and Nino likes how his confusion can be easily mistaken for irritation. Whoever gave him that face made sure his emotions will be hard to read and easy to misinterpret.  
  
The very impression of an android.  
  
Maybe that’s why they declared him the better one, Nino thinks.  
  
“Do what? What did you want to do?” Jun asks, and Aiba gives him a sad smile.  
  
“I wanted to make a change.”  
  
Jun looks surprised by that, but he didn’t show it fully. An eyebrow twitch, nothing more. Aiba keeps the smile on his face as he explains, “It’s what made me go to engineering. I wanted to help. But in the end, it wasn’t what I wanted, so I left.”  
  
“Was it so easy?” Jun asks in a low voice, picking at his salad. “So easy for you to leave because it wasn’t what you expected?”  
  
He and Aiba share a glance, and Nino just tilts his head as a gesture for his maker to go on. “It’s not about expectation, Matsujun,” Aiba pauses, meeting Jun’s eyes. “Can I call you that? That sounds like a good nickname for you. Very catchy.” Jun just nods, and Aiba continues, “Anyway, it’s not about what I expected to do, it’s about not finding what I was looking for.”  
  
“And what were you looking for, Aiba-san?” Jun asks, and Nino smiles at the same time his engineer does.  
  
“Humanity,” Aiba says.  
  
Jun is frowning now, a natural reaction to confusion because Nino is sure that he doesn’t understand. Aiba is a human, how can he look for humanity? If he was on a planet populated by mostly humans, being the human home planet, why would he look for something like that, something that is supposedly ordinary in that planet? Nino knows that for Jun, humanity is a foreign concept because he was designed to surpass humans in every way, to be perfect in almost every aspect. The price of that perfection was that he won’t understand the flaws of what it means to be human. Nino himself doesn’t understand it very well, being mostly machine, but he’s certain that he understands _more_ compared to Jun.  
  
“You’re as much of a prototype as I am,” Nino finds himself telling Jun, because he knows Jun won’t voice out his confusion. He’s not Nino, and therefore he’s not an Aiba product. Jun was programmed to effectively mask his emotions and only show what needs to be shown. He wasn’t designed like Nino, whose program is grounded on Aiba’s transparency and honesty.  
  
It’s what makes them different despite being of the same model, the same type.  
  
“I know you don’t understand,” Nino continues, and Jun’s stare turns to him, intense and quite intimidating had he been human. He simply smiles at Jun’s face. “But one thing I learned from the one who made me, is that it’s okay not to understand. It’s okay not to have all the answers.”  
  
Jun doesn’t look accepting regarding this concept. His face shows it. “We’re made to be knowledgeable enough for our design to be fully exercised.”  
  
Spoken like a factory-issued pleasure model, Nino thinks. He grins. “Yes, we are. But whoever made you chuck a bit of their humanity into you, and as you know, all humans are different. Your program is developing as much as mine does, and in time, maybe we’ll both understand.”  
  
Jun’s eyes are piercing. “Understand what?”  
  
Nino turns to Aiba, catching the smile on Aiba’s face. He knows Aiba is thinking of the same thing when he finally turns to Jun to answer the last question Jun asked for tonight.  
  
“How to be human, I guess.” He smiles, looking out the window before turning back to Jun. “Humanity.”  
  
\--  
  
Since the happening at the diner, for some odd reason, he and Jun seem to have developed a friendly form of competition as the months went on, something Keiko raised an eyebrow at when she found out.  
  
“What, you’re friends with him now?” she asked when she overheard him talking to Jun on his tablet about another joint request and addressing him as Jun-kun.  
  
He turned to her, eyes full of amusement. “I’m actually hurt, Keiko-chan,” he said, smirking. “You think I can’t be friends with the big shot pleasure model, being a big shot myself? You of little faith. I’m so hurt.”  
  
She smacked him on the arm for that, laughing at his confidence. Keiko seems to genuinely like his confidence despite not being a client and being a fellow pleasure type. While he has a friendly competition with Jun, with Keiko there is no competition, just the occasional friendly jab at each other’s pride. He likes her and her infectious laugh. She doesn’t hesitate to give in to laughter when he simply says something she deemed to be amusing enough.  
  
Jun’s a different case, though. While Keiko would have laughed, Jun would only settle for an eyebrow twitch. Sometimes Nino gets an eye roll, when he’s in bullshitter extraordinaire mode. But Nino finds that he likes Jun’s uptightness, only because he finds it extremely interesting to see Jun break character. When he gets more than the reaction he expected, he counts it as a point and he tells Aiba about it.  
  
One time, when he and Jun are in Space Cadet—one of Nino’s least favorite establishments but a place Jun seems to like—Jun asks him what he wants to achieve in his remaining days, and he’s actually surprised that he stares at Jun for eight point three seconds. Jun hits him on the arm, and he laughs.  
  
“Retirement,” he says with a grin, and Jun frowns at him. “I want to retire rich, Jun-kun. Who doesn’t want to retire early and rich?”  
  
“You’re made for pleasure.”  
  
Nino leers at Jun now, something that gets him the inevitable eyebrow. “Probably better than you at that, Matsumoto.”  
  
Jun shrugs. “Arrogant as ever, Ninomiya.”  
  
Nino laughs, clapping his hands. They only resort to last names when the teasing is escalating, and Nino thinks that it sure took him a lot of jabs at Jun’s ego for him to reach this stage of friendly competition with him.  
  
The best way to be friends with Jun, Nino realizes, is to make a comment regarding his impeccable performance and laugh at his face when he finally gives you the murderous glare.  
  
“What will you do after, if you do retire?” Jun asks him, and Nino tilts his head in thought. Well, he hasn’t thought that far ahead. In such a limited time he has so many things he still wants to discover about himself, about his program, about Jun because he’s the better one.  
  
“Become a space pirate, maybe?” he says, and he laughs at Jun’s frown growing deeper. “Then again, Jun-kun, probably not. I can’t be a criminal even if I probably have the skills to be one.”  
  
Jun’s eyebrows are still furrowed. “Aiba managed to put something as illegal as that in your program?”  
  
Nino keeps grinning. Aiba. Jun has finally grown comfortable with Aiba’s presence that he refers to Aiba the same way as most people do. Nino is yet to find anyone who calls Aiba by his given name. “Who knows? Aiba-shi’s program is something I haven’t fully figured out yet. His genius is something even I can’t crack from time to time. I just know that I could be great if I put my mind to it. But no, like I said, probably not a space pirate. Can you imagine the expenses?”  
  
Jun has his head tilted and one eyebrow quirked. “Expenses? You’re the one looting. If you become a pirate you’ll spend your time pilfering from freighters and passenger shuttles. And knowing you, you’ll be rich in no time.”  
  
Nino nods. “True, but you have to bribe the right people in order to stay off the radar. Can you imagine how much that will cost me? If only I liked the excitement it can offer me more than I like credits and myself. Such a real shame, isn’t it? Seeing as I have such potential.”  
  
Jun rolls his eyes at him then, and Nino spends the rest of that night in a lighthearted banter with his fellow replicant.  
  
His easygoing relationship with Jun eventually extended to him crashing in Jun’s place, once when one of his clients, a rather pushy Antlian governor who had grown attached to him, didn’t want to leave Praximus even if his envoy was ready. He waited for Nino in Nino’s place, and the first thing Nino thought of was to go where Jun lives, because Aiba’s place is too far.  
  
When Jun opens the door and frowns at him, he puts on his best panicked expression, something he learned from watching Terran films when he gets bored enough.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Jun asks him, and he makes his eyes as wide as possible and clings to Jun’s shoulders tightly.  
  
“My neighbor is insane!” he exclaims because he can’t tell Jun about his client; it’s one of the things he considers to be a part of the confidentiality he offers each and every client he interacts with. Jun raises an eyebrow at that, and Nino continues holding on to him. Internally he feels like laughing because Jun probably believes him already, and he knows he only needs to amplify the bullshit he’s creating to achieve success. “He’s throwing knives at every person he sees in the corridor, and I swear Jun-kun, if I die this will be on your conscience and it will follow you for life!”  
  
Jun pushes him then, sighing loudly. “For the record, Ninomiya, I don’t believe even half of what you’re saying, but since I don’t want to know what kind of trouble you got yourself in this time, fine, I guess you can stay for tonight. But don’t go near my wine cellar and don’t touch anything. Everything I own probably costs more than what you choose to wear every day.”  
  
The following morning he resolves to wake Jun up by playing the screaming voice of the then-popular Terran actress Cheryl Vinson right against Jun’s ear, and that’s how he discovers that Matsumoto Jun is terribly weak in the mornings. He gets a pillow to the face for his touching method of awakening, but he thinks it’s worth it when he shares his first breakfast (Jun is a good cook, he discovers) with the one replicant he was supposed to hate.  
  
Supposed to.  
  
Nino thinks there are so many things he was supposed to do and wasn’t supposed to do. He was supposed to be scrapped, nothing but pieces of metal and circuitry set aside in favor of someone better. Every acquaintance of Aiba on Earth assumes that he is. He was supposed to hate Jun because it would have been the easy thing to do, because Jun was that someone better. He was supposed to put the blame on Jun’s shoulders because if he wasn’t created, Nino and the rest of the X3 series would have had a chance.  
  
At the same time, he wasn’t supposed to have that chance because Jun was created, along with everyone else in the same series as him. He wasn’t supposed to be in Praximus V, with Aiba supposed to be somewhere in a mining facility in Regulus. He wasn’t supposed to meet any of his clients and wasn’t supposed to make Keiko laugh as much as he wasn’t supposed to try his best to annoy Jun just because it’s fun to do. He wasn’t supposed to look out for Jun just because he feels a different kind of affinity towards him given the truth behind their association.  
  
And yet here he is.  
  
“Do you believe in that?” Jun had asked him once.  
  
Even now, with him being twenty-two months, three days, sixteen hours, and thirteen seconds old, he finds that he still does.  
  
He’s very lucky.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very very late than I intended, but RL happens etc etc. Anyway, I'll try to post two today. The next one will be up in a couple of hours, maybe. Half of this part syncs with the narrative of the original, so if you haven't read that...what are you doing here LMAO

The first time he isn’t able to reach Aiba’s contact information is the first time he understands the emotion humans called fear.  
  
He’s on his way to meet an Omegan client when he thought of reminding Aiba of their very late dinner, and he blinks at the ‘contact information not recognized’ he gets as a notification. He’s about to try again when his pad suddenly beeps with an incoming call from someone whose contact information remains withheld, and he picks up almost immediately.  
  
“Nino!” he hears Aiba’s panicked voice, and he doesn’t know if he is to sigh in relief or to continue being fearful because he can clearly sense Aiba’s distress. “Nino, you have to help me!”  
  
He can hear Aiba’s rushed breathing. “Aiba-shi, calm down first,” he says, because he knows that if Aiba panics he will never understand anything that comes out of his engineer’s mouth. “Calm down, then tell me what’s going on.”  
  
“I need your help,” Aiba says, still breathing hard on the other line, and Nino almost places his entire pad against his ear. Aiba normally uses a video call, but seeing as he’s using an unrecognized contact, Nino can only interpret it as Aiba being in a place nobody is really supposed to find out if they can help it.  
  
How did Aiba get himself there?  
  
“Yes,” he says slowly, hoping his voice can help Aiba calm down. “Yes, you need my help, we’ve established that. What for? What happened to you? Where are you this time?” He remembers Aiba’s story of ending up in the Praximus Main Shipyard because Aiba couldn’t give out proper instructions to the hovercar driver that it ended in an almost altercation. He remembers laughing at the story over a glass of vodka.  
  
“You’re not going to believe this,” Aiba tells him, and he sounds a bit proud that Nino is amazed at how he managed to sound like it despite his panic.  
  
He shrugs. “Try me, Aiba-shi. I’ve seen and heard a lot of unbelievable things in my life.” Being an unbelievable thing myself, he thinks. The supposedly destroyed is prospering in Praximus as much as the one deemed to be better. He still finds that unbelievable.  
  
He hears Aiba take a deep breath at the other line. “I’m in the Stargate Penitentiary.”  
  
“What?!”  
  
To his knowledge, only the most despicable of outlaws from the Praximus planetoids end up in the Praximus Stargate Penitentiary, as well as those outlaws who were foolish enough to not to use their riches accordingly. It’s one of the reasons why he abandoned the space pirate idea, because the penitentiary is more commonly known as the quadrant hellhole and the shortest sentence he ever heard of is eighty years.  
  
“How the hell did you end up in there?!” he exclaims.  
  
“Calm down, Nino!” he hears Aiba say, and Nino can only stare at his pad at the odd turn of events. Now he’s the one panicking. Did Aiba kill anyone? No, Aiba can’t even kill him even when he was being paid to do so; there’s definitely no a murder charge on Aiba’s name. Did Aiba steal from anyone? Unlikely, he thinks, because he’s not me to even consider it. Aiba may have made him, but Aiba made improvements to his own personality to give Nino his own identity. Did Aiba assault anyone important? Very unlikely, because Aiba is the type of person who only goes into fights with hovercar drivers and those were just verbal fights.  
  
He sighs, running a hand down his face. “Seriously, what did you do that you actually ended up there?”  
  
“That’s something I can’t tell you for now because I’m in a bad situation here. They told me I’m allowed to call one person who can help with my bail, but that person has to go here and talk to the right people,” Aiba explains.  
  
“And,” Nino says slowly, “that person is me.”  
  
He can imagine Aiba begging him with fingers steepled before him. “Please, Nino! I don’t have anyone else to call!”  
  
That is true, and honestly, Nino is a bit pleased that Aiba thought of him and no one else. “How much is your bail?” he asks, and he hears someone on the other line claim that Aiba only has a minute left before the call gets cut off.  
  
“They tell me that it’s up for discussion, but nothing lower than a hundred,” Aiba murmurs, and Nino’s eyes widen.  
  
A hundred thousand credits, minimum? “Oh, Aiba-shi, what did you do?” he groans. He expected that amount because the penitentiary is home of the intergalactically recognized as irredeemable. In fact, the concept of bail being possible in the penitentiary is something Nino never knew. He thought only the ones sentenced to rot in hell get inside its walls.  
  
Which should explain its minimum bail being that expensive. It’s the highest security prison available in this section of the universe. Anyone who has entered it are yet to escape from it.  
  
Aiba might be the very first one to do so.  
  
“But fine,” he says, not waiting for Aiba to answer. “Stay put, don’t talk to anyone who’s not me, don’t touch anything that might make your bail higher. Just stay calm, sit tight, and wait for me.”  
  
He hears Aiba’s relieved sigh. “Thank you, thank you, Nino! I promise I’ll repay you with whate—” the line suddenly gets cut off, and Nino immediately scrolls down his pad to look for Jun’s contact information, quickly requesting a video call.  
  
What greets him is the same coiffed hair he saw when he first caught sight of Jun. It seems like a memory of a long time ago now.  
  
“What?” Jun asks, eyebrows immediately furrowed. The usual greeting he uses on Nino.  
  
“I need you to cover for me,” he says, and Jun’s eyebrow shoots up. Nino never shared any of his clients to Jun unless it’s a joint request for the both of them. He likes to keep the high-paying ones to himself and for that he can understand Jun’s disbelief.  
  
Jun goes back to frowning. “You’re shitting me.”  
  
On any other time, Nino would grin, would wiggle his eyebrows suggestively, or come up with more bullshit just to piss Jun off. But not tonight.  
  
“No, I’m not. Not this time. Room 4067 in the Sullivan Lounge, 2300. She’s an Omegan whose name is Reia. She doesn’t mind me recommending other models to her; in fact she has invited me to do that more than once. I’m doing it now, which is why I need you to cover for me.”  
  
Jun’s eyes narrow. “And if she asks why you aren’t able to make it?”  
  
“Urgent matters of a personal nature. My favorite reason. Will you go?” he asks, knowing it’s ten minutes before 2300. The reason he contacted Jun is that Jun has to be somewhere within the vicinity of the Sullivan Lounge. He always is. “I promise you that it will be worth it, if it’s the credits you’re worried about.”  
  
Jun still looks at him in disbelief. “If she pays that much what prompted you to pass it up?”  
  
Ah, Nino thinks. Of course he’d ask that. If there’s one thing Jun knows about him, it’s that his next favorite thing after himself is earning credits. “Like I said, Jun-kun, urgent matters of a personal nature. You have nine minutes and forty-six seconds till 2300.”  
  
Jun fixes him with a look. “Forty-four. All right.” He cuts the line without waiting for Nino’s comment.  
  
He immediately composes a message for his client, telling her that something suddenly came up and he’s sending in someone else, along with his apologies. He immediately gets a reply of her not minding it, and that she’s looking forward to see who he sent in his stead, that she hopes he’s as good as Nino, even better if possible.  
  
‘Not possible, Reia-san,’ he types, smirking. ‘I’m the best. But he can keep you entertained, no doubt about it.’ He attaches a winking emoticon before sending it to her, and he gets up, finally leaving his apartment.  
  
He has some rescuing to do.  
  
\--  
  
The Praximus Stargate Penitentiary, he discovers, is a floating high-security spacedock right above the fifteenth moon of Praximus III. He managed to convince a former client, a shuttlecraft pilot from Cygnus, to take him there and Nino made sure to pay him fifty thousand credits upon arrival and another fifty upon return to Praximus V, provided they depart immediately and no questions would be asked.  
  
Besides, Nino doesn’t know what to answer if his former client asks him what had Aiba committed because that’s what he’s here to find out.  
  
They had no problems with clearances since every shuttlecraft gets checked for identification, and when he said over the intercom that he’s here for an Aiba Masaki, they were given the clear to park the shuttle in the main platform of the facility.  
  
He’s escorted by eight guards to the main office where he meets the Chief Warden, which is, weirdly enough, a client he once entertained.  
  
What a strange world, Nino thinks, when he sees the recognition over the warden’s face. Fujisaki, Nino remembers. A client who refused to reveal anything about himself and something Nino respected at the time. Now he understands why. He was his second client after Kyoko left for the Orion Nebula.  
  
“Kazu,” Fujisaki says as he gestures for Nino to take a seat, and Nino smiles. That’s how Fujisaki always called him, the shorter version of his given name still said with the same affection. “You’re here for someone according to my head jailer?”  
  
Nino nods, sitting on Fujisaki’s desk instead, knowing how appealing the man always found him. “I am. Aiba Masaki. He has a bail posted, I presume?”  
  
Fujisaki appears thoughtful, and Nino plasters his most charming smile. He has the program to project himself to be appealing, might as well use it to save the guy who did the program.  
  
Something flashes over the warden’s eyes, and Nino waits. “Ah, the one arrested for shouting at a patrol officer from Praximus V.”  
  
Nino blinks in surprise. Aiba got sent to quadrant hellhole because of that? Because he raised his voice at a patrol officer? Well, Nino sort of understands, because only Aiba would have the courage to try something as outrageous as that, but at the same time, the pettiness of it takes him by surprise. But he supposes it makes sense; Aiba can never harm anyone. The thought of him going to prison (and not just any prison) surely warranted something as unbelievable as this, given the surrealness of it all.  
  
Nino is smiling now. “Yes, chief warden.” He decides to settle for Fujisaki’s title since they’re in the man’s turf. “That one. How much is his bail?”  
  
Fujisaki steeples his fingers on the desk. “You’ve heard of stories of this place, haven’t you?” he asks, and Nino nods. All kinds of stories at that. Some he immediately categorized as bullshit, some he thought possible. Fujisaki continues, “Then you should know that the minimum bail posted here is a hundred thousand, nothing less.”  
  
Well, he has that money. He has more than that, and frankly, he’s willing to pay even higher for Aiba, but of course he won’t say that to anyone. He has a reputation to maintain.  
  
Still, Nino is an opportunist. You have to be if you want to survive the Praximus pleasure district and maintain a friendly rivalry with Matsumoto Jun. “I am aware of that,” he tells Fujisaki. “But is it right to set such an amount for someone who didn’t even commit a crime?”  
  
Fujisaki looks amused. “Aiba Masaki was out during curfew hours according to the patrol officer’s report.”  
  
Well shit. Nino never knew that a curfew was implemented in parts of Praximus because curfews are nonexistent in his side of the colony. After all, the pleasure district thrives as the skies grow darker and the night turns deeper. Why the hell was Aiba out when there was a curfew, and why did he have the gall to scream at the patrol officer who called him out on it?  
  
Aiba’s thinking is something he’ll never understand, he realizes.  
  
“Still,” Nino says, keeping his cool facade, “it wasn’t enough to warrant him a place here. In the Praximus V Local Prison, probably, but here, the Stargate Penitentiary?” He peers at Fujisaki under his lashes. “Even you would agree. He doesn’t deserve to be here, and whatever he did must be a spur of the moment for him. I’m sure he regrets it now.”  
  
Fujisaki meets his eyes. “How much are you asking for?”  
  
Nino smiles. “The proper amount for someone who didn’t even deserve a place in your stronghold.” He knows Fujisaki catches on to his meaning. The minimum bail in the local prison of Praximus V is five thousand credits. They’re asking twenty times that amount even if Aiba didn’t deserve to be in this hellhole.  
  
Hold on a little, Aiba-shi, he thinks. I’ll get you out of here.  
  
Fujisaki leans back on his chair, never taking his eyes off Nino. Finally, he sighs. “Half, nothing less.”  
  
Nino gets off the desk to scroll through his pad for credits transfer. “Very well. You have my gratitude, chief warden. I won’t forget this consideration.” He does the transfer without hesitation, and he meets Fujisaki’s eyes.  
  
There’s nothing there but amusement. “You’re lucky I like you,” Fujisaki tells him, and Nino smirks.  
  
“I’m aware of that too.”  
  
Fujisaki calls for his head jailers to escort him back outside, where Aiba’s waiting for him. On his way out, he is stopped by the warden’s voice calling out his name.  
  
He turns, and Fujisaki’s looks curious. “One last thing,” the man says, and Nino waits. “What is he to you? Aiba Masaki, I mean. What is he to you, for you to come almost immediately after he called you? For you to reason with me regarding his bail before paying it without thinking twice?”  
  
Nino understands the warden’s confusion. Every client of his, be it a former or a current one, knows of his appreciation for credits. The fact that he accepted the offer without another word and made the transfer immediately must have been a surprise.  
  
Nino lets out a little laugh. He looks at the chief warden’s eyes. “I owe him everything.”  
  
With that, he leaves the warden’s office and goes to the main platform, where Aiba waits along with their transport back home.  
  
\--  
  
Nino’s former client and current pilot lands them close to Aiba’s home, and Nino pays him the remaining fifty thousand before telling him that he can always visit Nino with the usual charges lowered as a form of gratitude. The Cygnian flashes him a smile before leaving, and it’s only then that he turns to Aiba.  
  
He stretches out a hand. “Three hundred thousand credits, with interest if you’re unable to pay the full amount right now.”  
  
Aiba looks mortified and Nino can’t really blame him. “What? You said they cut my bail by half! And you only paid a hundred thousand to that pilot guy, so all in all that makes a hundred and fifty! Why are you asking for twice the amount? Nino!”  
  
Nino raises an eyebrow, something he learned to master by watching Jun. “Two reasons, Aiba-shi,” he says as Aiba swipes his keycard to his home, and Nino settles himself on Aiba’s couch.  
  
“One, because you said you’ll pay me back for it before they cut the line.”  
  
Aiba’s pouting now. “Yeah, but what you’re asking for is not even the right amount!”  
  
Nino ignores him. “And two, because I had to give up an appointment and let Jun-kun have it. That one pays well and I missed it to get your ass out of the quadrant hellhole. If I’m in my right mind I’d ask you for half a million because it’s that high-paying, that job I missed. And I let my biggest rival get it. Can you imagine the look on his face? He’ll gloat the next time he sees me.”  
  
Aiba blinks at him. “You didn’t tell Matsujun?”  
  
Nino shakes his head. “I told him I had to attend to urgent matters of a personal nature. Jun-kun is very much under the impression that the less he knows about me, and by extension, you, the better. But can you imagine the look on his strong face if I told him that you were in the penitentiary only moments ago? He’d think we’re both up to nothing good!”  
  
Nino leans back on the couch, smirking at his maker. “So three hundred. Consider the other one-fifty there as my talent fee. You should be glad, Aiba-shi. That’s not even close to what I name as my talent fee.”  
  
Aiba opens his mouth to say something, but they’re cut off by the doorbell ringing followed by a series of pounds against the door. Aiba meets his eyes in alarm, and Nino turns to the door with a frown.  
  
“I paid your bail in full, they can’t be after you,” he says in a small voice. “Why did they let us leave the penitentiary if I didn’t?”  
  
Aiba squares his shoulders and walks towards the door before Nino can think of stopping him. “Well,” Aiba begins, already pressing buttons on the console to open the door. Nino can only watch, torn between admiring Aiba’s bravery despite being a former penitentiary convict only one point seven hours ago and being terrified for Aiba because whoever’s behind the door seems very determined to get in. “I guess we’ll just have to find out who’s here for me.”  
  
The door slides open three seconds later, and that’s how Nino meets a labor type up close for the first time.  
  
“Sho-chan!” Aiba greets the stranger, and Nino remains watching as Aiba hugs the replicant. Nino keeps his eyes on "Sho-chan"'s face, deducing that he’s not a pleasure type though he can qualify as one if he puts his mind to it. Whoever designed him had taste.  
  
Aiba lets the replicant in, and Nino finds himself being stared at. He smirks at Sho’s direction, tilting his head. He’s not the one intruding, he thinks. He’s resting after a very elaborate rescue mission.  
  
“This is Nino!” Aiba says, and Nino salutes in Sho’s way. Keiko calls it his trademark move to make an impression. “You know him, Sho-chan? You remember him?”  
  
Sho nods. “The one you made.”  
  
“The very same,” Nino says, standing up and offering a hand to Sho. This is the first thing Aiba taught him and he has applied it ever since. He turns to Aiba for any information on Sho, and that seems to remind Aiba that he’s the middleman here.  
  
“You remember the time I ended up in the shipyard? The story that made you laugh so much?” Aiba asks as Nino lets go of Sho’s hand.  
  
“Yeah, the one with the crazy hovercar driver," Nino acknowledges in a bored tone, before frowning and widening his eyes. “He is the crazy driver?!”  
  
“No!” Sho exclaims at the same time as Aiba, and Nino laughs.  
  
Sho seems to realize that Nino’s just toying with him, and he narrows his eyes, making Nino smile. “Thank goodness you’re not him,” Nino says, tapping Sho on the shoulder. Sho turns to look at his hand before meeting his eyes. “If I had to deal with one more guy seeking to end this guy,” he points at Aiba, “I think I might actually consider lending a hand to ensure their success.”  
  
“Hey!” Aiba says behind him, and Nino grins.  
  
Sho still has his eyes on him. “Sakurai Sho,” he says after a moment, and Nino nods in acknowledgement.  
  
“Ninomiya Kazunari, but I suppose Aiba-shi already told you that. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he pauses, meeting Sho’s eyes, “Sho-chan.”  
  
\--  
  
Sho, as it turns out, has “something important to discuss” with Aiba, and Nino takes that as his cue to give them a bit of private time, helping himself to whatever alcoholic beverage Aiba has in stock. He finds a bottle of Mensan whiskey, something he laughs at, but he settles for a bottle of Lyran vodka, pouring himself a glass.  
  
In his boredom he types up a message to Jun, asking how the night went, and he gets a reply that tells him that Reia is ‘sufficiently satisfied and is quite generous with tips’. A part of Nino is still annoyed that Jun got one of his clients, while another part is proud that Jun now knows what kinds of clients he has.  
  
Not that Jun’s clients aren’t as high-paying as his are, but still. Their share of clients have their own sets of differences, and Nino knows that his are mostly those who are similar in personality to Kyoko: spontaneous and thrill-seeking whenever the opportunity calls for it. Jun’s clients, he’s sure, are far from that. He’s not saying they’re very predictable, but there has to be a reason why they find Jun more appealing than him. He knows that Jun is attractive; he has to be. Looks constitute a big portion in the business, and it’s the very reason Nino got his first client.  
  
It’s just that he’s aware of how different he is from Jun. In design, in technique, in perspective.  
  
His pad beeps with an incoming message, and he turns to it, expecting Jun, only to see Aiba. It’s a message asking him to come to the room at the corner of the apartment, and Nino takes the bottle of vodka with him along with two more glasses. He tucks his pad under his arm and does as Aiba asked.  
  
He is greeted by the sight of Sho’s serious face and Aiba’s sad one, and Nino places the glasses and the bottle on the table, pouring without saying a word. He hands one glass to Aiba who takes it gratefully with a nod, the other to Sho who takes it after two point six seconds of hesitation.  
  
Nino walks towards the shelf Aiba has in the room and finds it full of engineering books. He leans against it, waiting for one of them to say something as he takes a sip of his drink.  
  
“What’s your incept date?” Sho suddenly asks, and Nino is suddenly reminded of Jun, the way Jun never referred to it as a birthday and denied that it’s the same thing.  
  
“Year 2233, June 17th,” he answers dutifully, and he waits.  
  
Sho blinks at him. “You have nineteen months and three days left.”  
  
Nino smiles, taking a sip of his vodka. “No,” he says, licking his lips, and Sho frowns. “I am twenty-eight months, twenty-eight days, fourteen hours, and twelve seconds old.”  
  
Sho looks confused, and Nino just grins. Before he can say anything, however, Aiba does it for him. “It’s about perspective, Sho-chan.”  
  
“Perspective?” Sho repeats, darting glances between him and Aiba. “Is it not the same? To say that Nino here has nineteen months left, being twenty-eight point four months old?”  
  
“It’s not the same,” Nino says, meeting Sho’s eyes. “To say the months and the days I have left is to look at it as if I’m running out of time.”  
  
Sho keeps the frown on his face. “You are running out of time. You’re a replicant as much as I am.”  
  
He smiles. “I’m only running out of time if I’m not living, Sho-chan,” he says sweetly, and he expects the confusion that washes over Sho’s face. He won’t understand, as much as Jun doesn’t understand. Nino supposes that the only way he himself understands is because he’s an Aiba Masaki creation. It’s inherent to him, the positive outlook, because Aiba successfully transferred his overflowing optimism to him.  
  
“Living? Live?” Sho asks, eyes narrowing. “We are not human.”  
  
Nino shares a look with Aiba, and Aiba simply nods for him to continue. “That’s true. We are not,” he agrees, taking another sip from his glass. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have any right to live.”  
  
He sees something change in Sho’s eyes, something that makes him wonder what kind of experience did Sakurai Sho have before he sat there in one of Aiba’s stools to have vodka with Aiba and him. He wonders what Sakurai Sho carries inside him that makes him say such things. Nino doesn’t think that Sho is cruel for saying such words, for he was only telling the truth. He is not cruel, but something must have happened to him that made him see things in a different way than Nino and Aiba do.  
  
Nino can only wonder what that is.  
  
He meets Sho’s eyes. “I should know, Sho-chan,” he says, smiling a little. “I’m not supposed to be here.”  
  
Sho can only look at him then, and he takes a deep breath. He turns to Aiba, and Aiba just sits in the stool across Sho and gives him a brief nod indicating permission. “I’m not supposed to live,” he begins, and he knows that Sakurai Sho’s attention is on him now. “Or so the corporation told Aiba-shi here. But this is a strange world we are in, you know? Because right now I’m here, drinking Lyran vodka without even asking for permission from its owner, telling you about how I see things. I’m not supposed to be here talking to you and yet here I am.”  
  
“What are you?” Sho asks quietly, and Nino smiles at him.  
  
“A lucky one,” he says. “A cancelled series, if you want to be more technical and I have a feeling that you do. You’re a labor type, aren’t you?” Sho nods, and he continues. “I’m someone whom they declared as not good enough even before they saw me, someone who had a death sentence even before I had the chance to open my eyes.”  
  
“And yet,” Sho says, his gaze intense on Nino, “you’re here.”  
  
Nino tilts his head in acknowledgement. “Just because I’m not human doesn’t mean they can simply take away my right, my chance.” He points to Aiba then. “That person sitting across you ensured that, and for that I owe him everything that has happened and will happen to me since I opened my eyes, be it good or bad.”  
  
He fixes Sho with a look. “Just because we’re not human doesn’t mean we don’t have any right to live.”  
  
Sho lets out a deep breath, finishing his vodka in one gulp. Aiba pours him another one without a word, and he raises his glass in thanks. Nino waits, certain that Sho’s bracing himself to say something.  
  
“You say you’re someone who had a death sentence even before you opened your eyes,” Sho tells him, and he nods. “Well, I’m someone who doesn’t know when that death sentence will come.”  
  
It takes him four point nine seconds to discern Sho’s meaning, and when he does he can only let out a sigh in understanding. Sakurai Sho is someone who’s looking for himself, someone with no sense of his own identity aside from own serial number. He’s probably the only one of his kind, because why else would his engineer delete his incept date from his databanks? He’s either an experiment or an android illegally designed. Worse, an unfinished and an abandoned work, activated to see how long he lasts.  
  
Sakurai Sho is not cruel, Nino realizes. What he endured, what happened to him, that was cruelty. Whoever made him ensured he gets to be less than a human and even less than the average android, having taken away the one date that is important for them, the day the program terminates itself.  
  
If he felt sorry for Jun more than once, he wonders what is this he’s feeling for Sho now, a replicant he's only met tonight and yet has to have endured more pain and suffering than any replicant he’s ever known, than any human he has ever met.  
  
“It’s why you came to Aiba-shi,” is what he chooses to say, because he’s been designed to know the best things to say. He has a feeling Sho wouldn’t want his pity, so he doesn’t give it. He gives Sho his respect instead, knowing that it’s the one thing that can never go wrong. “You came to Aiba-shi in hopes of finding out when that death sentence is.”  
  
Sho looks at him now, and he looks nothing like the skeptical android with narrowed eyes when Nino called him ‘Sho-chan’. He looks as if he and Nino are standing on equal ground, like they finally understand where the other is coming from. “Yes, that’s why I’m here.”  
  
It only takes one look at Aiba to know that Aiba wasn’t able to tell him anything, and Nino continues resting his weight against the shelf, finishing his vodka. He’s been programmed to know what to say and when to say it, and this is the first time that Aiba’s program is telling him that saying nothing is the right thing to do.  
  
He walks over the table and grabs a stool nearby to sit on it before pouring himself another glass of Aiba’s vodka. He raises it in front of Sho, who only eyes it.  
  
“A toast,” he explains, and Aiba immediately raises his, “to meeting you, Sho-chan.”  
  
Sho frowns, his own glass still on the tabletop. “You only do toasts when something is worth celebrating.”  
  
Nino can only smile at that, wondering how many times did Sakurai Sho think that his existence is not worth anything. “That’s right,” he says, shooting a pointed look at Sho’s glass on the table. “And this is worth celebrating.”  
  
Sho is still frowning at him. “Why? What for?”  
  
Nino continues grinning, grabbing Sho’s wrist and raising Sho’s glass for him. “Cheers,” he says as their glasses clink, “for Ninomiya Kazunari has made another friend.”  
  
\--  
  
The night he got Aiba out of the Stargate Penitentiary is also the same night he managed to make Sho drunk enough to not remember where he lives, and so Nino hailed a hovercar for the both of them and gave his own address.  
  
When Sho jerks awake the following morning, he makes sure he’s close by.  
  
“Good morning, Sho-chan,” he greets, and hands Sho a glass of water, something Sho takes gratefully.  
  
“Where are we?” Sho asks, already looking around. “A hotel? An inn?”  
  
Nino actually feels proud that Sho has mistaken his own place as an establishment. His lack of furniture probably gave that impression; his place is very tidy to look at because of that. “You are in Ninomiya Kazunari’s humble abode.”  
  
Sho sits up. Nino made him sleep on the couch and put a blanket on him, something Sho only notices now. “Thank you,” he says, and Nino waves it off. It’s not a big deal, he thinks. He only did as a friend would, and he thinks Sho must not have too many friends then, for him to be not used to acts of kindness.  
  
That, or Sho must have spent too many days being alone.  
  
Either way, Nino feels sorry for him. He doesn’t voice it out, though. He keeps a knowing smile on his face when Sho looks at him, and he feels a bit delighted when Sho frowns at the sight of his face. “You do know that this is called ‘owing me one’ in human customs?”  
  
“This is how you are with those you treat as your friends?” Sho asks, and Nino laughs.  
  
“Ask Aiba-shi,” he says, still smiling. “He’ll tell you worse, I’m certain.”  
  
Sho sighs before getting up and folding the blanket Nino provided him with. “Very well,” he says when he finally faces Nino. “How can I make it up to you?”  
  
Nino smiles wider. “I’ll tell you when the time comes, Sho-chan.” He tilts his head towards his kitchen. “In the meantime, would you like to have breakfast?”  
  
With two plates of steaming pancakes is how Nino learns about Sho’s job, that Sho is one of the many shipyard engineers in the Praximus Main Shipyard, mostly dealing with shuttlecraft repairs. From Aiba last night he has learned that Sho is the one who helped Aiba find his way back home, but Aiba failed to specify what exactly it is that Sho does so Nino had to ask.  
  
“And are you good?” he asks, chewing a forkful of pancakes. “With all the shuttles you’re working with, I mean.”  
  
Sho meets his eyes and he looks confident, sure of his own abilities. Nino finds that it’s a good look on him. “I’d say I am.”  
  
Nino definitely likes Sho’s confidence. For someone who looked mostly uncertain and even lost the night before, seeing Sho as someone who knows what he’s good at is a nice change. Nino believes him, and he smiles at Sho’s declaration before asking for Sho’s contact information, something Sho hands over in an aluminum chip immediately.  
  
He quickly picks up his pad to scan it, and giving Sho’s name to the computer when it prompts him to. “You might get the occasional messages and holos from me,” he says as a warning. Nino thinks he picked up on Aiba’s use of emoticons, something Jun pointed out to him three point seven weeks ago. “Scratch the ‘might’, you will get occasional messages and holos from me because it’s what I do.”  
  
“With your clients?” Sho asks, and Nino lets out a little laugh.  
  
“Oh no, Sho-chan,” he says, cutting a piece of pancake using his fork. “I do far more creative things with my clients. No, that’s not what I do with them. It’s what I do with my friends.”  
  
Sho looks at him, setting down his fork. “Do you have a lot of friends, Nino?”  
  
He thinks about the question. Are his clients his friends? No, some of them aren’t. Some of them are quick to remind him that they’re paying for his services and no friend does that. Are his fellow pleasure models his friends then? He can only think of two who can fit the category, and one of those two is someone who will probably begrudgingly agree to the label. Is Xindee the waitress from the diner he frequents his friend?  
  
“What makes a lot?” he asks back, and this time it’s Sho who thinks. “How many friends must I have for you to say that I have a lot? What’s the standard here?”  
  
Sho blinks for several times before looking up again. “I’d say the standard is provided that you’re no longer alone and there is more than one.”  
  
Nino cocks his head. “Then, I have a lot,” he states before smiling at Sho. “And since you’re no longer alone, Sho-chan, and that aside from me you also have Aiba-shi, I’d say you have a lot too.”  
  
Sho doesn’t say anything anymore, finishing his plate of pancakes. There is a long moment of silence between them (eight minutes and fifteen seconds), and when Sho’s done with his breakfast and Nino thinks Sho won’t say anything anymore, that’s when he hears a quiet murmur of “Thank you.”  
  
He knows it’s not just the meal he’s getting gratitude for, but he knows Sho’s probably embarrassed to say it out loud. Most people are, and replicants, being patterned after people, often are too. He gives Sho a brief nod of acknowledgement, enough to tell Sho that he understands, and they spend the rest of breakfast with Nino finishing his meal in companionable silence.  
  
\--  
  
The first time Nino feels a twinge of sadness happens on the day Keiko says goodbye to him.  
  
“Where will you go?” he asks while she stands beside a parked shuttle. They’re in the shipyard, and Nino is here to bother Sho because his earliest appointment for today is in three hours and he’s bored, but he caught sight of Keiko and he only learned of the news today.  
  
“Out there,” Keiko says, pointing upward despite the shipyard’s six hundred-meter metal roofings blocking the view of the night sky. “Out there, Nino. While I still have time.”  
  
“Why?” he asks, frowning a bit. Of all the times Keiko thought of leaving, why just now? She could’ve done it months ago.  
  
She shrugs her shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking,” she tells him with a grin, and he smiles back. She’s one of the very few people around him who can do that. “But I’m going now because I’ll never have another chance.”  
  
She looks excited, happy. The pleasant, welcoming smile Nino has gotten used to seeing doesn’t leave her face, but Nino supposes that with her departure today he will have to get used to not seeing it outside the Praximus Stargate Club or the Sullivan Lounge.  
  
He will miss her.  
  
“Don’t look so sad,” Keiko tells him as she lightly punches his arm. “I just wanted to see what’s out there before it happens. Hell, now that I think about it I might not even make it to the destination, but at least I’ll be out there.”  
  
Nino does the math. She has two weeks, four days, and fifteen hours left, being nearly a year older than him. He turns to the parked shuttle and sees a blinking sign above it that it’s leaving for Earth, and he looks at her questioningly.  
  
“I know, right?” she says, laughing a little. “Of all places to go, I picked the one where we both came from! I guess I just wanted to see it, how different it is if it’s any different.” She adjusts the satchel wrapped around her body before grinning at him again.  
  
He offers her a hand, which she looks at in confusion. “This is one of the first things I learned,” he explains. “The one who taught me said that I should do this when I part ways with someone.”  
  
She laughs before taking his hand in her own and giving him a handshake. “But rather than say ‘part ways’, why don’t we call it ‘me going right ahead and you wishing me luck’?” She tilts her head expectantly, and Nino meets her eyes.  
  
“Good luck, then,” he tells her, and she smiles. “Keiko-chan,” he adds as an afterthought, and she throws her arms around him and Nino hugs her back. He will miss her laugh, her incredulous expressions whenever he tells her about his friendship with Jun, her nightly stories about who gets to occupy the top floors of the most expensive establishments.  
  
He holds her for a while and when she pulls away, Nino sees a bit of moisture around her eyes. “I’m actually going to miss you, asshole,” she says, wiping away her tears and punching him again in the arm. “You and your overflowing confidence, you and your refusal to pay for anything. I’ll miss all of that.”  
  
Nino walks towards her and places his hands on her shoulders. Her eyes widen, and he smirks. He quickly turns her around and shoves her towards the shuttle. Keiko turns back to him with confusion on her beautiful face, and he continues smirking.  
  
“Go, Keiko-chan,” he says, already waving a hand enthusiastically. “Go and see what’s out there for you and for me! Go right ahead,” he pauses, committing the sight of her into memory. “I wish you the best.”  
  
She lets out a little laugh as she shakes her head, and Nino sees her eyes glistening. “Jerk,” she murmurs, but she looks up at him again and smiles. “I’m going now,” she declares, and Nino laughs before nodding. “So you better watch, Ninomiya Kazunari, for this is going to be worth it.”  
  
She enters the shuttle hatch without looking back, and Nino spends the next five minutes and eighteen seconds waiting for her shuttle to depart, and he continues watching the craft as it exits the shipyard and disappears into the night.  
  
He cheers her on even when he can no longer see her shuttle, and he thinks, had their places been reversed, she would do the same. She’s one of his friends, one of the very few who had no interest in his origin and had nothing but funny stories for him. He misses her already, but Nino finds that he’s thankful that he got to see her before she left.  
  
He’s thankful he got to say goodbye.  
  
\--  
  
Nino’s association with Sho eventually leads to his popularity that extends to the shipyard, added to the fact that one of his former clients is still there, the same pilot who brought him to the Stargate Penitentiary and returned him back to Praximus V. Shipyard workers have come to know him as ‘Nino’, and every time he drops a visit to Sho with Aiba in tow, he often hears his attention called.  
  
“You really showed them what an Aiba Masaki creation is capable of, huh,” Aiba says as they walk in the platforms, and Nino laughs loudly with his head thrown back.  
  
“Here’s the thing, Aiba-shi,” he says, waving a hand to a shipyard engineer he knows by face, “I haven’t even shown them how talented I am and yet they already know my name.”  
  
They often find Sho with his foreman, a human named Ohno Satoshi, someone Sho introduced to him six point two weeks after that day he served pancakes to his friend.  
  
As the months pass, he discovers that Ohno is a quiet human, nothing like the bundle of energy Aiba is, and yet he finds that Ohno’s silence is comforting. Sometimes, Nino visits the shipyard to get some peace and quiet because the pleasure district can get pretty chaotic, and whenever Sho’s too busy with a repair to talk to him, he finds that Ohno is a suitable person to have a conversation with despite the conversation being mostly one-sided.  
  
He finds that Ohno is a great listener. The man doesn’t say much; he just hums in agreement from time to time and nods, but that’s more than enough for Nino. He talks about a lot of things because Ohno is easy to talk to. Sho is always within hearing range, somewhere under a shuttle or inside one as Nino goes and tells stories about the metropolis, about his first client whose name he withholds. He tells them that he often wonders where she is right now and what she’s doing, what kind of different worlds she sees only to say that “it’s different yet the same.”  
  
Sho appears from underneath a shuttle when he shares about that. “What does that mean?” he asks, and by now Nino has more than enough examples to be able to explain it properly. He tells Sho and Ohno what it means to him, how he finally understood what it meant after several months of staying confused.  
  
“Have you met someone like that?” Ohno asks when he’s done explaining, and Nino can feel Sho’s eyes on him as well. “Someone who’s different yet the same?”  
  
Nino nods. “I have.” He thinks of Jun then, of the many late dinners they spend in the diner and of their banter, their friendly jibes at each other’s skills and abilities, the haughty smirks and quirked eyebrows. He thinks of the fact that Jun still doesn’t know he has a keycard duplicate of Jun’s apartment, something he did during their last joint request, three point eight months ago when Jun ordered him to dress up for one of Jun’s clients, and just to spite Jun he opted to wear a plain white tee and faded jeans. He thinks of Jun’s face that night, how Jun stared at him in horror and how he eventually gloated, having gotten a higher pay because Jun’s client claimed that he liked Nino’s audacity.  
  
He thinks of Jun but refuses to elaborate because he doesn’t think he can explain Jun to them, not when Jun is the better model and the replicant he’s supposed to be angry at, to hate.  
  
How can Nino explain that to them despite Sho and Ohno already knowing most of the truth about him? That he doesn’t hate Jun and that he never did, that he never blamed Jun for anything despite knowing the truth from Aiba prior to meeting Jun in the flesh? How can he explain something he doesn’t fully understand yet despite Aiba telling him that it’s called being brave?  
  
He wonders if Sho ever felt how it is to be brave, if Ohno ever did. He chooses to ask. “Do you know how it feels to be brave?”  
  
For a moment the two shipyard workers he’s with say nothing, and he simply sits with legs crossed, waiting for them to answer.  
  
“Yes,” Ohno tells him after a long moment (six minutes and thirty-eight seconds of silence). “I felt it when I brought myself to Praximus V.”  
  
Nino tilts his head. “Did you have a life you left on Earth?”  
  
Ohno smiles. “Yeah.”  
  
“And you left it for Praximus?”  
  
Ohno nods. “I did.”  
  
Nino remembers Aiba and his choices, Aiba and his decision to leave Earth and to take Nino with him even after the corporation asked otherwise and following the rules would have been the easier path to take. Are humans so rash, he wonders? So ready to take risks?  
  
He decides to ask Ohno, and Ohno appears to consider his question. “You asked if I ever felt brave,” Ohno tells him, and he nods. “That was it for me, and that’s what being brave is for me. When I took a risk without knowing what would happen and I did it anyway.”  
  
“Why did you do that?” Nino asks, and he’s sure Sho’s listening too.  
  
Ohno smiles at the both of them. “Because I may never get another chance.”  
  
Living, Nino realizes. Ohno is living, and he proved it when he made that decision, that leap of faith without minding the consequences, without looking to see what he’s leaving behind. It’s the same thing Keiko did. Keiko left while she had the chance to. She didn’t mind that her expiry was coming.  
  
Nino understands her now, and Ohno too, that Ohno’s moment of bravery is also the moment he continues to live, and Nino can only smile at what he just learned from two different people. Different people yet the same concept, different people having different decisions and yet the same reasoning behind the decision.  
  
Different yet the same.  
  
He turns to Sho then. “Do you know how it feels to be brave, Sho-chan?”  
  
Sho meets his eyes. “I don’t think I do,” Sho admits, and Nino only looks back at Sho, his expression giving nothing away when in reality he’s already thinking on how he can help his friend about this, about this journey to understanding things better that he began since he first uttered the words “I don’t understand” in front of the human who created him.  
  
“How about you?” Sho asks suddenly. “Do you know how it feels to be brave?”  
  
Nino doesn’t look away from Sho’s eyes as he thinks of the one replicant he can attribute that emotion to, and he smiles, silently berating himself for not seeing it before. How did he not see it? He should have realized it from the very moment he considered Sho as a friend.  
  
And yet, it took him a back and forth question regarding courage before he made the connection, before he even saw the similarities. It took him ten months of association with Sho and his foreman Ohno before he finally realized that Sho reminds him of Jun.  
  
“Yes,” he says, smiling as he finally finds the way to make Sho understand what bravery feels like despite bravery having many kinds. “Yes, Sho-chan, I know how it feels.”  
  
And I think, he doesn’t say, it’s about time I help you get to know it, too.  
  
\--  
  
He meets Jun three days after his talk with Ohno and Sho, right after another joint request from Reia, his Omegan client who has taken a liking to Jun, something Jun gloats about every now and then and something Nino blatantly ignores. He meets up with Jun and asks the question he knows that will make Jun serious.  
  
“How much time do you have left, Jun-kun?” he asks despite knowing the answer, despite knowing Jun’s birthday, the one Jun still stubbornly calls as an incept date, like Sho.  
  
“Long enough,” Jun answers, and Nino is reminded of Sho too much, of the first time he met Sho and Sho stated how many months and days he had left to live, back then. He is reminded of Sho and how alone Sho felt to the point he thanked Nino for a simple declaration that he made, that Sho is his friend.  
  
You’re too alike, Nino wants to say but he holds his tongue. Too alike and I somehow wish I made the two of you meet sooner.  
  
“I’ll call back soon for a meet-up,” he says with a grin, something Jun raises an eyebrow at. “So you better show up, Matsumoto. Show up and don’t waste my effort.”  
  
He makes sure to leave Jun before Xindee arrives with the bill, as a revenge for Jun’s frequent gloating earlier.  
  
He hails a hovercar back to his place and the moment he’s inside, he places a reservation in Indus Nix, another members-only bar but with an ambiance he favors more than Space Cadet’s. He pays for the reserved booth in full despite wincing a little at the price (a hundred and fifty thousand credits because of his rather late notice, the establishment informs him).  
  
The next thing he does it to tell Sho to call him as soon as Sho’s available, and he settles back in the passenger seat of the hovercar, spending the rest of his ride back home in silent contemplation regarding what’s about to happen as a consequence of what he’s doing.  
  
His pad beeps the moment he enters his apartment, and he quickly accepts the call from Sho. Sho never does video calls unless it’s Nino who invites him to, and so Nino settles for placing the pad on his dresser as he gets ready for bed.  
  
“Nino?” he hears Sho’s uncertain voice, and he smiles. Sho must have thought something was wrong. In his ten months and three days of association with Sho, he discovered that Sho is someone who worries a lot, someone who always jumps to the worst of conclusions.  
  
Nino supposes that with the way Sho lived his life so far, maybe expecting the worst did him more good than harm.  
  
“I’m here, Sho-chan, I’m fine,” he answers, hearing Sho’s sigh of relief.  
  
“Why did you ask me to call?” Sho asks, and Nino picks up his pad from his dresser before sitting on the edge of his bed.  
  
“You remember the favor you owe me that night you got too drunk at Aiba-shi’s place and you couldn’t tell me where you live even though I asked you eight times?”  
  
He hears Sho sigh again and he smiles, already imagining the look on Sho’s face. “Yes, I remember.”  
  
Nino can’t help rubbing his palms in anticipation. This is easier than he thought it would be. What he only needs is for Jun to actually show up. Nino thinks there’s a 75.3% chance that Jun will, given that he warned Jun earlier not to waste his effort.  
  
This hardly requires effort, he thinks, but since he’s not getting paid, maybe it’s all right to claim that he did work hard to make this happen. If it pays off. That depends on both parties now.  
  
“Well, the time has come for you to make it up to me,” he informs Sho, making sure that Sho can hear the excitement in his voice.  
  
There’s a pause on the other line before a murmur of “How?” and Nino’s grinning now.  
  
“Indus Nix, three days from now. I’m sending the address to you. 2100.”  
  
Sho’s skepticism can be heard from his voice over the line in the same way as Jun’s can whenever he refuses to take what Nino says at face value. “Who am I meeting?”  
  
Someone too much like you, Nino wants to tell him, but he goes for “Someone different,” instead. Different yet the same. He thinks he’s smiling too much now and he’s thankful it’s not a video call. Sho might not go if Sho can see his face right now. Sho might think he’s scheming too much to be trusted. Then again, there’s always this 84.8% that Sho won’t go because it’s a late notice and Sho might have too much shipyard work to do, and because Sho has the tendency to seclude himself.  
  
When will he realize, Nino wonders, that it’s perfectly okay for him not to be alone?  
  
Sho says nothing and Nino waits for a minute before asking, “Will you go, Sho-chan? It's nothing big, you don't have to say a lot of flowery stuff. Just ask for the basics.” He needs to find out. He needs to be sure because this might be the only thing he can do for two of his friends.  
  
With Sho’s time running out and him still not understanding a lot of things, Nino is desperate to help in the only way he knows how: by meddling.  
  
“You’ll know in three days,” Sho tells him, and Nino can detect amusement in his friend’s voice.  
  
“That’s really not fair, you know,” he says in reply, and he hears Sho snort.  
  
“Someone has to keep you on your toes, Nino, when Aiba’s not around. Good night.” Sho hangs up then, and Nino can only let out a little laugh. Despite the possibility of Sho not showing up and Jun doing the same because they’re both that stubborn, Nino finds himself eagerly waiting out for the days to come, just to see how things will unfold.  
  
Three days later he tries to call Jun, and he laughs when he gets rejected twice. Jun is obviously still bitter about the bill, and he drops a voice message expressing his lack of remorse which makes Jun pick up.  
  
Counting it as a success, he grins as he continues playing the game Aiba shared with him. “There’s an address I forwarded to you,” he tells Jun. “Go there now and show up in casual clothing, Jun-kun. No one’s asking for the pleasure model Matsumoto Jun for tonight.” He hangs up then, not waiting for Jun’s questions. Jun tends to ask a lot, always wanting to know what awaits him, never liking the idea of spontaneity.  
  
He’s getting ready for bed when his pad beeps followed by another, an hour and twelve minutes after he called Jun. He immediately flicks a finger to open the messages, one from Jun and one from Sho, and he laughs at both contents.  
  
Jun calls him an imp and Sho has only his name with a period, but he can imagine the tone in Sho’s voice with the way it’s structured. He sends both of them a holo of him doing a kissy face before he calls Sho.  
  
Sho picks up only at the third ring. “Nino,” he says, and Nino tries not to laugh at the tone.  
  
“What?” he asks innocently. “Did you go, Sho-chan?”  
  
He hears Sho sigh. “What do you think?”  
  
He feels extremely victorious now. “Well?” he asks, prompting Sho to open up. “What do you think of him?”  
  
“I asked him to meet me at the shipyard two days from now,” Sho informs him, and he hums.  
  
“Why, Sho-chan,” he says sweetly, “that’s something you don’t do a lot. Care to tell me why?”  
  
Sho doesn’t say anything for a moment and Nino waits, adjusting himself to a far more comfortable position on his bed. He’s lying on his side when Sho speaks again. “He reminded me of what you told me when I asked you about your incept date.”  
  
Nino's eyes narrow in confusion for a moment, then it sinks in.  
  
I’m only running out of time if I’m not living.  
  
“So you saw it too? How he’s running out?” he asks, and he hears Sho hum. “Did he tell you how long he’s got?”  
  
“He did.”  
  
Nino smiles. He didn’t expect Jun to do that especially towards a replicant he only met tonight. “And what did he say aside from that?”  
  
There is a pause on Sho’s side. “He said I best make it worth his while.”  
  
Nino laughs then, because Jun would. Of course, Jun would treat everything as a challenge, even what Sho has to offer, not realizing it for what it truly is.  
  
“You still didn’t answer my question, Sho-yan,” he says. He only uses that nickname on Sho when Sho’s forgetting to tell him something, when Sho’s leaving out an important detail. “Why did you ask him to meet you again? Are you interested? In ten months of association I’ve never seen you interested in anyone, not even in me, and I’m one of Praximus’ best and most talented. You can ask around if you’re not convinced. But in all the months you’ve known me you’ve never been interested. I would know, Aiba-shi designed me to detect that from anyone. So why?”  
  
Sho is quiet for four minutes and six seconds and counting, and Nino smiles. “Take your time.”  
  
The next time Sho speaks, he has to strain a little to hear it. “Because I felt something I never felt before.”  
  
“Which is?” When Sho doesn’t respond, Nino keeps the smile on his face. “You can tell me, Sho-yan. That’s what friends are for. I’m here to listen to you anytime you need someone to talk to.”  
  
The silence stretches for two minutes and six seconds. “I felt like taking a risk,” Sho tells him, and Nino’s eyes widen. He didn’t expect that, but he’s pleasantly surprised.  
  
Still, he persists on asking. “Why?”  
  
There’s a long beat of silence and Nino’s starting to think Sho won’t answer him when he hears, “Because I may never get another chance,” from the other line, making him remember Ohno and their talk six point three days ago, how Ohno mentioned that taking risks is another form of bravery, a different way of displaying courage. Sho repeated Ohno’s words verbatim, and Nino understands what it means.  
  
He feels immensely proud of Sho now and he thinks he’ll split his face in half because of the way he’s smiling. Sho wants to know how it feels not to run out of time, how to make the most out of what he has left without looking back and recounting his steps.  
  
Sho wants to live. And he’s brave enough to try.  
  
“That’s it, Sho-chan,” he says slowly, making sure Sho can hear him so that Sho will never mistake his meaning. “That’s how it feels.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully I finish posting all of these before June, because by June I think I'll be MIA. This thing is done, btw. It's the editing that takes me time because it's literally been years since I looked at the document.

Of course, because he is Nino, the first thing he does the following morning is to pay Jun a visit to hear Jun’s side of the story, despite knowing how weak Jun is during mornings.  
  
When Jun referred to Sho as Sho, he can’t hide the surprise from his face that Jun scoffs at him.  
  
“What?” Jun asks. “You didn’t think he’ll give me his name?”  
  
Nino grins because Jun doesn’t understand. It’s too early for him to understand. But he’s getting there, and Nino finds that it’s worth smiling about, the reality that Jun is on his way to see things in a different light, to understand how it is to be human and live at the same time.  
  
Nino decides to play along. “No, I have no doubt how persuasive you can be even without exerting any modicum of effort. I just didn’t think he’d actually come, much less tell you who he is."  
  
He wasn’t lying with his 84.8% calculation regarding the probability of Sho showing up that night. Sho, even if he’s friends with Nino and Aiba and Ohno, is still under the impression that being alone suits him best and is something he is to content himself with. Whoever made Sho ascertained that Sho feels this way, being the only one of his kind, the only labor type with a serial number unlike any other because there are no other members of his series.  
  
Was Sho even supposed to be created? Nino is sure Sho wondered about the same things over and over again, and Nino wants to ask him how he got over it. Did it take time? If so, how long? How long did Sho look for answers before deciding it’s time to let go?  
  
And he never felt bravery before, Nino wonders? Isn’t letting go the same as bravery? But maybe, because he’s Sho, maybe he interpreted it rather differently. Maybe instead of courage he interpreted it as giving up, as resigning himself to what he has because there are no answers available to him, no doors open. Maybe instead of treating it as a positive thing Sho treated as Nino always thought he would: as another deficiency to his model, another proof of his flawed design.  
  
Nino looks at Jun and sees the lack of understanding in Jun’s eyes. He wants to help Jun understand because doing so also helps Sho, but he knows he has done all he can and the rest is up to the both of them. He wants to ask Jun to not leave Sho because Sho has been left alone for far too long, but it’s too early and it’s no longer his place to do so. He wants to tell Jun to give himself a chance because doing so gives Sho a chance too, but it’s not the right time.  
  
Seeing Jun’s doubtful face now gives him the urge to convince Jun to go and meet Sho, targeting Jun’s friendship with him and Aiba because it’s the only way this will work and Jun will go. He knows of Jun’s tendency to overthink, his tendency to think of the worst only for it to never happen.  
  
It’s one of the many things that makes him so similar to Sho, and yet he’s not aware and Nino’s certain that Sho isn’t as well. As much as he wants to tell them both what he knows, to share what he has learned, he knows he has done enough and this is one of the two things he can do for the both of them.  
  
So Nino does the other thing left for him to do, the only thing that isn’t too early and he’s in the right position to do.  
  
He chooses to believe in his friends.  
  
\--  
  
The day Nino first notices a 0.2% decrease in his artificial muscles’ flexibility is also the day he discovers its limits (thanks to one of his many antigravity kink sessions with a handful of clients— not simultaneously).  
  
He calls it ‘the beginning of something different’.  
  
Unlike most stories he heard, however, it’s not so bad. Most Terran films he has seen had characters who weren’t so welcoming to the idea of it happening, something that extends to the majority of his human clients and to 60.4% of his replicant acquaintances.  
  
The next time he sees Jun he watches for anything different, anything strange just to see if Jun is also experiencing the same thing, just to check if what’s happening to him is also happening to Jun as the other replicant glares at him upon finally discovering that Nino does have a keycard duplicate.  
  
He finds nothing unusual. Jun is still caught up with the littlest things, and Nino calls it as another proof that Matsumoto Jun is the factory-issue, the one who’s supposed to be in Praximus V to extend his services because he’s been made to do so. Nino treats it as another reminder of how grateful he should be for every waking day he has living and breathing in an off-world colony he wasn’t supposed to be in.  
  
Rather than be angry, like most things about him involving Jun, he finds himself feeling even more indebted to Aiba if that’s still possible.  
  
And like always, he finds himself truly lucky.  
  
\--  
  
Five point three weeks after he meddled, he gets another call from Sho as he tries to get some peace and quiet after a rather creative session with a bunch of tourists from Regulus (the very wealthy ones at that), as he hides himself in the same bar where he asked Aiba the truth, exactly two years and ten months ago.  
  
It’s not a video call because Sho seems to have the sixth sense that there’s always a 75.3% chance that Nino is in someplace not private. Not that Nino likes going out; it’s just that he’s been designed to go out and about once the temperature in Praximus drops to signal nighttime.  
  
“Yes?” he asks as a welcome, plopping his face on his left hand. He’s drinking Omegan ale, even weaker than Lyran vodka (and far cheaper). Sho’s call is not disturbing him in any way; he did say he’ll always be around to listen to whatever Sho wants to tell him and he intends to keep his word.  
  
He just asks because he thought Sho’s supposed to be with Jun now. That seems to be the pattern nowadays. How Jun manages to squeeze it in his schedule and maintain all the clients he has without ever passing Nino any, that’s something Nino still hasn’t figured out. He knows how efficient Jun is with handling all his affairs that there are zero complaints about him and his performance, but how he manages to make time for Sho despite all that is something Nino admires him for.  
  
Not that he’s ever going to tell Jun about that because Jun will gloat once he does.  
  
He laughs at the crook of his elbow when Sho answers his question with a “He taught me yoga.”  
  
He knows that Jun is an opportunist because they both are, although Jun’s attitude differs from his in such a way that his extends to how he makes the most out of his life.  
  
That’s what Jun’s learning now, or at least, what Nino believes Sho is learning with Jun.  
  
But why yoga? He wants to laugh because he has known Jun long enough to know what kind of people shakes Jun’s core, challenges his foundations and makes him question what he’s made for. That’s exactly why he set Jun up with Sho, because Sho’s the one being in Praximus V who probably questioned himself for nearly all his life. Most people Jun interacts with, given that he’s in the same business as Nino is, are the most confident the quadrant has to offer.  
  
You have to be if you want a night with pleasure models of their caliber.  
  
To give Jun someone whom he’s not used to handling after years of his successful career in the pleasure district, that when he finally made the connection and saw the similarities, he knew that the only way he can help Jun is by helping Sho as well.  
  
Still, yoga. Nino knows that Sho’s flexibility only extends to him going underneath a shuttle to tweak at tubes and conductors. Sho isn’t much of a paragon when you want someone to help you see the benefits of the discipline that originated from Earth.  
  
“Yoga?” he asks despite hearing Sho the first time. He tries not to make his amusement be evident in his voice because Sho is the type who gets easily embarrassed by the slightest bit of innuendo. It’s extra hard for Nino because he’s a pleasure model and he’s an Aiba product. He was designed to be full of innuendos and it takes a lot of effort to restrain himself whenever he’s talking to Sho because once he starts, Sho might refuse to talk anymore.  
  
Sho has something important to say, after all. Nino knows because Sho only calls him for important things, which nowadays revolve around one of Praximus V’s highest-earning pleasure models.  
  
“Yes,” Sho says from the other line. “He taught me.”  
  
Nino sips his ale slowly. Taught. Sho could have said that Jun made him do yoga, but he went with taught. The idea of them learning from one another gives him the feeling he never felt before, not before tonight.  
  
Hope.  
  
“Did he now? How was it?” he asks. It’ll be hard not to smile as this conversation progresses, now that he knows it’s leading to good things and his meddling seemed to be a good decision to act upon.  
  
There is a pause then he hears Sho take a deep breath. “I couldn’t do it.”  
  
Nino shuts his eyes at the admission. Is that why Sho called? Did he call because he felt inadequate once more, that just because he couldn’t bend his limbs in the right angle he interpreted it as another proof that he’s lacking in so many things, that he may be an unfinished creation after all?  
  
“But you know what, Nino?” Sho asks suddenly, and there’s this change in his voice that Nino spends two seconds thinking about before he realizes that Sho is smiling on the other line, and he waits, only humming to tell Sho to go on.  
  
He hears Sho take a breath. “I didn’t mind it so much.”  
  
That makes him smile because it’s different. It’s so different from what he expected and it’s something Sho wouldn’t say if he never met Jun, something Sho probably thought he himself could never say. But he just did and Nino thinks, if Sho were here with him right now, he would have told Sho to order whatever he wants and he’d pay for all of it.  
  
“You didn’t?” he asks, raising his glass in a toast despite having no companion to have a toast with. This is worth drinking to, he thinks, the fact that Sho is loosening up and living a little, because if this is happening to him then it must be happening to Jun too. It’s symbiotic, this agreement they have, that when Sho gets something Jun is bound to get something in return, because from what Sho told him in a message four point nine weeks ago, Sho made a proposal that they learn something from the other till the end of their time.  
  
Trust Sho to make it sound as professional as that.  
  
He hears Sho hum. “No. Is it strange, that I didn’t mind that I couldn’t do it?”  
  
Nino sips his ale and thinks about it. “For you, yes,” he begins, knowing he has Sho’s attention now, “but for you at this time? No. I won’t say it’s strange. I won’t call it strange that you didn’t think on it, that you didn’t dwell on the idea. Because that means you’re getting something from this just like you expected you would when you presented this arrangement to him. And that’s a good thing.”  
  
Sho doesn’t say anything, and Nino continues drinking his ale to let the words sink in. After he finishes his drink, he places the glass on the table and turns to his pad, seeing the call still connected. “Sho-chan?” he calls out, and he hears Sho hum in acknowledgement. “Tell me,” he prompts, because even without him seeing Sho’s face he knows Sho is thinking because Sho is always thinking.  
  
“Why is it a good thing?” Sho asks after a moment, and Nino smiles despite Sho not seeing it.  
  
“Because that’s part of living, Sho-chan. It means you’re not just here, you’re not just alive. You’re living, and living is a good thing.”  
  
He signals the bartender for another round of ale and he drums his fingers against the tabletop.  
  
“Nino?” he hears Sho ask after a while and he just lets out a hum to tell Sho that he’s here, that he’s still listening. “This means he’s living too, isn’t he?”  
  
Nino grins. He can see it, can hear it in Sho’s voice that Sho’s starting to care about Jun far deeper than what Sho’s willing to admit at this time.  
  
“Yes, I suppose it does.”  
  
He can imagine Sho nodding as he hears Sho’s quiet “Okay”. He keeps the grin as he drinks his ale in one gulp, placing the glass back on the countertop and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  
  
“One more thing, Sho-chan, before you drop the line,” he says because he knows Sho is about to excuse himself. He always does that whenever he’s done asking about Jun, something Nino’s gradually getting used to. Sho’s hardly calling him about anything else lately.  
  
He makes sure Sho’s listening before he continues. “You said you didn’t mind it so much, the fact that you couldn’t do yoga. Care to tell me what made you think that?”  
  
He has an inkling what, but he has to hear Sho say it because this is something that Sho has to be willing to admit, something Sho acknowledges himself. It’s that important.  
  
Sho doesn’t say anything for almost an entire minute of silence (fifty-four seconds) but Nino waits because that’s what he always does whenever he’s talking to Sho. He gives Sho time to think, the chance to answer because time is something Sho never got from the start. He gives Sho a chance because chances are the things Sho denied himself after failing to find anything about his origins, about why he’s in Praximus in the first place.  
  
That is until he met Jun and he felt like taking a risk.  
  
When Sho finally answers him, it’s in a voice so soft that he leans forward to catch it. “Because it made him laugh, Nino. He laughed and when I saw him do that, when I heard that, I thought it was okay that I couldn’t do any of it.”  
  
Nino grins at that, hiding his wide smile with his hand. “Why? Because you wanted to see him laugh after weeks of association?” He can’t blame Sho if Sho wanted to; Jun has strong features that make the idea of him laughing somehow unbelievable. Sho wouldn’t be the first person to ever try making Jun laugh just to see how he looked like when he did it.  
  
“No,” Sho tells him, and he frowns for a brief moment. “Not just that.”  
  
Nino leans back in his chair, already expecting what’s coming and already smiling because of it. He’s never wrong about these things so he orders another round of ale and raises it in a toast when Sho continues, “Because I wanted to see him happy.”  
  
That, Nino thinks with a huge grin, that’s definitely worth drinking to.  
  
Even if it’s just cheap Omegan ale.  
  
\--  
  
The recent visitor influx because of NGC-3031 being the newly-discovered galaxy for the growing conquest of the explored parts of space keeps him busy that his 0.2% decrease in flexibility climbs higher to 0.325% by the end of the week.  
  
It’s nothing major, nothing to grow worried about but finding that there’s a crick in his neck after a session at a frequency of twenty-five percent over the past three months, it’s a noticeable change for him. He can still comply with his clients’ creative requests, and with tourists and colonists being stranded in Praximus V as passenger and freight shuttles undergo repairs and refits, he finds himself in even more creative situations.  
  
Antigravity acrobatics is quite popular with his new batch of clients, sixty percent of which are colonists from Earth. Well, Nino supposes that a client asking him to perform his services with the manual gravity control of the room being gradually decreased shouldn’t be really surprising; he has seen even more astounding things in his life in the past.  
  
And that’s counting Aiba Masaki actually getting out of the Praximus Stargate Penitentiary alive.  
  
He finds himself having more clients to entertain, so much that he thinks it’ll be suitable if he lives in the Sullivan Lounge for a week and in Pegasus Dwarf the following week before spending half of the upcoming month in the Stargate Club. Those are the famous establishments for the stranded tourists and colonists at the moment and the places where Nino finds himself in 85.7% of the time lately.  
  
When he finally gets a bit of rest (after doing a lot of rescheduling and budgeting his time as efficiently as he budgets his credits), as a reward he invites Jun out to drink in the same bar he took Aiba to and the very same bar where Sho told him that Sho wants to see Jun happy.  
  
“My treat,” he tells Jun and he smiles at the already raised eyebrow, “purely out of the goodness of my heart.”  
  
Jun doesn’t even dignify that with a reply, just shrugs and tells him to lead the way, which he does, eventually taking a seat on Jun’s left at the bar counter.  
  
He does his usual jabs at Jun’s ego, asking if his clients finally realized that he isn’t _that_ attractive as Jun downs glass after glass of Lyran vodka. Jun simply lets out another noncommittal shrug, and Nino orders two more rounds for him.  
  
When Jun thanks him with a mere nod, that’s when he decides that it’s time.  
  
Jun has finally reached that stage with Sho, where it’s evident that he’s feeling something he never felt before. Nino doesn’t know exactly what Jun’s feeling at the moment. It can be that Jun has grown accustomed to making time for Sho that not being able to do so lately makes him restless. It can be that Jun desperately wants to know more about Sho and Sho is obviously keeping him in the dark.  
  
Why Sho does that, that’s what Nino wants to find out.  
  
Because it’s obvious that Jun still doesn’t know the truth regarding Sho, the same truth Sho told Nino the night they first met. Nino knows that Sho isn’t against about the idea of telling it to anyone who asks, which is why he’s wondering why Sho still hasn’t told Jun about it. He wonders why Sho’s keeping it, and if he knows Sho as well as he likes to think he does, he has this strong feeling why.  
  
But he has to ask Sho about it and seeing that it’s Jun whom he’s with at the moment, he saves it for another time.  
  
The conversation steers in the favorable direction for him, with Jun asking how Aiba met Sho, and Nino quickly whips out his pad to type a message to his maker, consisting of only three words as he attaches the bar address: ‘Aiba-shi, it’s time.’  
  
He and Aiba discussed when they should tell Jun the truth because sooner or later they know they have to, given that Jun has opened himself to them since Nino introduced Aiba in the diner. They mutually agreed that the right time would come when it’s time, and now is that time so he calls Aiba, knowing that Aiba will always come no matter what.  
  
When Aiba arrives and he has Jun’s scowling face in front of him, he can’t help laughing. He laughs because it’s so like Jun to make such expressions when confronted with Aiba’s neverending enthusiasm regardless of the hour. It’s so like Jun to frown at someone whose level of energy doesn’t match his, especially when he’s the only one taking one drink after another.  
  
He continues to watch Jun’s face as the lighthearted banter turns serious, with Aiba admitting that he met Sho three years ago, and he calculates the rate of how the alcohol in Jun’s system depletes as each second passes.  
  
“How long does he have?” Jun asks him eventually, and Nino wants to tell him the truth but it’s not his to tell, so he merely points to Aiba because it’s up to Aiba to explain this side of things. Nino’s job is to ensure the conversation doesn’t hit too close to home for his maker and that Jun gets to ask the right questions. His job is to look out for both Aiba and Jun here.  
  
Telling the harsh reality isn’t.  
  
Aiba, as always, tells Jun the truth. “I can’t tell you that,” he says, and Nino understands. Aiba can’t say it because it isn’t his to tell and because saying it doesn’t make it any less hard to accept. Nino knows how hard Aiba searched only to find nothing about Sho, nothing in the databases to tell them anything about Sho, who made him, when they woke him up.  
  
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” Jun asks, and Nino knows what’s coming but he’s too late because Jun’s saying, “You’re a former bioengineer,” and all he can do is to grab Jun’s arm tightly and shake his head repeatedly at the choice of words.  
  
On any other day, he would have forgiven Jun, on any other place he would have let it pass. But not now, not here when Jun’s about to find out why Nino approached him in the diner at that time, why Nino introduced Aiba to him in the first place.  
  
At the same time he can’t blame Jun for saying it because he understands Jun’s frustration. Sho’s keeping Jun in the dark as much as he and Aiba do. For his part and Aiba’s, they’re not telling Jun what they owe him until now. For Sho’s part, he’s doing it for reasons Nino isn’t sure of.  
  
Either way, Nino thinks, they all did their fair share of hiding and it’s about time they come out with what they’ve been keeping. It’s just that he didn’t think that the way Aiba gets to tell the truth is with him remembering that he’s a former bioengineer, a former dreamer who had his aspirations destroyed by the same corporation he put his faith in.  
  
Faith. It’s the same thing he has for Sho and Jun’s case, and he knows how it feels to believe. He can only imagine how Aiba felt when that faith was betrayed.  
  
Betrayal is something he never experienced before and something he hopes to never feel.  
  
He can only watch as Aiba divulges the truth, telling Jun that he is the then-star of the pleasure model designs, that his design ensured that any other creations didn’t get a chance to show what they got. He can only watch as the truth sinks in for Jun, the way Jun’s face is a mixture of astonishment and—Nino is sixty-five percent sure—guilt. Guilt is something he never felt, but he has a feeling it’s the thing he’s seeing manifest in Jun’s face, and before he can help it, he nudges Jun’s side.  
  
“It’s not your fault,” he tells his fellow pleasure model. How can it be his fault when he never even knew? Jun didn’t ask to be created; he was just created. Jun didn’t ask for the other series to be delivered to the scrap heap for eventual incineration. Jun didn’t ask for the company to trample on their engineers’ hopes and ambitions.  
  
Jun didn’t bring about the destruction of who knows how many pleasure model series by simply existing. It’s not his fault, and Nino has never blamed him for it.  
  
“They were going to dismantle you because of me just like what they did to others,” Jun tells him, and Nino wonders how can Jun easily shoulder the blame without hesitation. From what he has learned about humans, they have the tendency to push the blame on somebody else.  
  
And yet here’s Jun, already blaming himself for something he didn’t even do, something he didn’t even intend to happen. Here’s Jun, telling Aiba that Aiba became a former bioengineer simply because he exists, despite knowing that Aiba left on his volition because the corporation turned out to be something he could no longer believe in.  
  
Here’s Jun, already taking responsibility and Nino wonders, if this is what Jun does after learning the truth he and Aiba had to offer, what will he do once he finds out about Sho? Will he do the same? Will he want to bear Sho’s suffering as much as he wants to take the blame for everything that’s happened?  
  
Is that how a factory-issued pleasure model thinks, Nino wonders? Will every pleasure model approved by Kitagawa act the same way, take responsibility and shoulder the burden without hesitation?  
  
Does it come with the program or did Jun acquire it in time, something that is solely Jun's?  
  
“It’s the corporation’s shitty excuse for monitoring progress via development compartmentalizing that did this. Not you, not the guys who made you, but the corporation,” he tells Jun, because Jun has to know that Nino doesn’t hate him, that Aiba doesn’t hate him. They never hated him or blamed him for everything because he wasn’t the one to blame.  
  
Nino knows that Aiba’s with him when he tries his best to explain to Jun that they don’t blame Jun for merely existing. Jun had every right to open his eyes as much as he did, as much as Sho did. Jun has the right to live as much as anybody else, and no one has any right to take that away from him.  
  
“You hear me, Matsumoto? It’s not your fucking fault.”  
  
Aiba immediately seconds him by claiming he’s been designed to be as perceptive as this, telling Jun that it’s his choice. Aiba chose to leave the corporation and Earth to save him. Aiba made a stand when everybody else bowed their heads at the corporation’s direct orders.  
  
Aiba fought, and he won. The proof is that the three of them are here in this bar at this moment.  
  
He tells Jun to cut it with the self-righteous bullshit and makes the usual comments he does to lighten the mood, something he has always been adept at. After all, Aiba programmed him to be able to read the situation accurately, to know what to say at the right time. He sets the table so they can talk about Sho, because sooner or later Jun has to know about Sho, and from the looks of things, Nino is inclined to go with sooner rather than later.  
  
Jun has to know, but Sho has to be the one to tell him.  
  
He tells Jun as much, telling his fellow replicant that it’s not Aiba’s place to tell him when Sho’s birthday is because Sho has to have a particular reason why he chose to withhold such an important information, and it’s up to Sho to explain that reason to Jun.  
  
Not that Nino won’t ask because he will; he has to know why Sho left out the crucial detail about himself despite claiming that he wanted to see Jun happy.  
  
He briefly narrows his eyes in thought. If he’s right with what he’s thinking, then Sho’s not only withholding information about him, he’s also withholding himself.  
  
Nino chooses to say nothing as Jun whips out his pad and immediately composes a message for Sho, labeling it as urgent. He doesn’t smile at the sight though he badly wants to, because Jun is finally making a move that can help Sho if Sho chooses to comply and not to be stubborn like he normally is.  
  
Faith, Nino reminds himself. Faith in this, in his friends, in what happens next. If he chooses to believe then that makes it worth believing in. If he chooses to put his trust in his friends then that makes them worth it, and they are.  
  
Eventually, he hauls Aiba away and they leave Jun in the bar after he paid (he can actually do that), and when they're already standing outside the bar he hears his maker sigh.  
  
“They’ll be okay, won’t they?” Aiba asks him, and Nino, despite his computer brain telling him that there’s a seventy-six percent possibility that they won’t, chooses to nod.  
  
“They will, Aiba-shi.”  
  
Aiba points to his forehead. “Your brain’s telling you that?”  
  
Nino smiles, looking up the sky and seeing three moons not obscured by the tall buildings. “No, it’s telling me otherwise in fact.”  
  
He turns to Aiba then, tilting his head. “But I choose to believe that they will.” He says it with the same confidence as Aiba exhibited when Aiba first sent him his way, when Aiba told him he'd get by.  
  
Aiba wraps an arm around his shoulders, his infectious grin back on his face. “That’s good,” Aiba says as they walk away from the bar, leaving the rest to their friends. They did what they could, and it’s time to just trust Sho and Jun to work things out and to do the rest.  
  
“Let’s both believe in that,” Aiba tells him, and Nino can only agree.  
  
It’s all a matter of having faith.  
  
\--  
  
He finds out about the truth behind Sho withholding himself a week later, when he gets a message from Sho in his pad that makes him turn down a sudden client request, giving his favorite reason of ‘urgent matters of a personal nature’.  
  
Sho’s message is a simple question of ‘Can I call you now?’ and Nino doesn’t reply and chooses to call Sho instead.  
  
Sho rejects his request for a video call and he switches to a voice one immediately. Sho picks up after two rings, greeting him with the usual “Nino.”  
  
He’s currently in the diner, waiting for his milkshake order, and the hour is late enough that there’s only one Lyran four seats away from him.  
  
“You won't send me a message unless something's up,” he tells Sho as Xindee delivers his peach-flavored milkshake. He smiles at her in thanks and waits for her to walk away before speaking again. “What's wrong? Aren't you supposed to meet Jun-kun? Is he there with you?”  
  
There’s a pause for sixteen seconds. “We met and he is,” Sho says slowly, and Nino smiles with the milkshake straw in his mouth.  
  
“Ah,” is all he says, and he hears Sho’s immediate outburst of “Nino”, a rather pointed way of saying his name that he knows Sho’s reddening at the moment.  
  
Still, it’s about fucking time, he thinks.  
  
“Well you can't blame me, Sho-yan,” he says sweetly, defending himself. “It's in my nature. I'm a pleasure type, I'm made to pick up these things.” He’s made to be full of innuendos and he thinks it’s such a shame that he doesn’t get to use them on Sho. Nino wonders what would happen if he tells Sho the same things he’s sending Jun from time to time: lists of popular kinks known in outer space and far more creative means of recreation instead of the two of them just fixing shuttles and doing yoga.  
  
Then again, if doing yoga and fixing shuttle parts led to this, Nino supposes they all paid off in the end.  
  
Sho says nothing on the other line, and Nino figures he can give Sho a bit of a hard time tonight, especially right after Sho just had a really great time.  
  
“So,” he says slowly, “did you ask if you can call me so you can complain about the sex?”  
  
“No!” Sho blurts out immediately and Nino laughs. He laughs loudly because Sho didn’t hesitate to deny that the sex is something to complain about, only proving that Sho is more than satisfied at the moment. Sho, who was never interested in him despite him being one of the best pleasure models Praximus V has to offer.  
  
Damn Matsumoto, he thinks, slightly amazed. Are you that fucking good?  
  
He takes a few moments to compose himself. “So Jun-kun’s very good? Very talented? Very flexible?” He only gets another sigh and another whine of his name and he smirks. “Well, I guess that means that some of the clients aren’t a bunch of liars like I originally thought. His popularity isn’t just some farce.”  
  
Sho must be so embarrassed by now and the thought of it makes him laugh more. It feels good to laugh. He laughs out of relief, only masking it with his humor and insinuations. He laughs because he was worried since the last time he saw Jun, which was at the bar. He laughs because he’s feeling so relieved that his brain’s seventy-six percent was just bullshit.  
  
“Nino, come on,” Sho says on the other line, asking for a break.  
  
Nino only smiles, sipping his milkshake. It tastes better tonight compared to all the other nights he had it. He wonders why. “Are you going to deny it, Sho-chan?” he asks, knowing that Sho’s face is heating up even if he can’t see it. “Because if you tell me that he’s not capable, let me just point out that the primary reason why you rejected my video call request is the fact that you can’t show me how you look like at the moment. Am I wrong? He got a bit wild, didn’t he? Our emperor.”  
  
He hears Sho sigh. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about.”  
  
Nino finally decides to cut Sho some slack. He thinks he has tortured Sho enough. “Okay,” he says, acquiescing. “What did you want to talk about? What is it about Jun-kun this time that you wanted to talk about?” Sho never talks about anyone else ever since he met Jun and Nino decides to make things easier for Sho by being precise.  
  
For a while, Sho says nothing, and Nino simply stirs his milkshake with his straw. After a minute and six seconds, he hears Sho’s voice. “He’s sleeping.”  
  
Nino grins at that. So much for cutting Sho some slack. Sho’s the one bringing all the cause of the jokes. “Fancy that. I thought he was just warming up in the showers for round sixty-five or something.” Before Sho can say anything though, he returns to the topic at hand. “And? What about him sleeping? Is it on your bed or his?”  
  
“We’re in my place,” Sho informs him.  
  
He hums, still grinning. “Your bed then. Okay. So what about it? You want him to leave early in the morning? Need me to book him to a client of mine at 0700?”  
  
“No,” Sho says, and there’s an edge to his voice that makes Nino turn serious. “Nothing like that, Nino. I…it’s…”  
  
“Sho-chan,” he says pointedly.  
  
“Yes?” Sho asks and he sounds a bit uncertain that Nino sighs.  
  
“All my jokes aside, though we both know I can't put that off because I'm made to be full of it, anyway, all of that aside, you know you can tell me anything, right?” He doesn’t know why he still has to remind Sho of it, but Sho seems to forget about the important things. “All the bullshit aside, you can tell me anything.”  
  
He hears Sho take a deep breath. “I do know that, Nino.”  
  
Nino nods despite Sho not being able to see it. “Then you need to meet me halfway like always because we all know that my know-it-all facade is exactly that. A facade.” He smiles when he hears Sho exhale again. “Take your time, I’ll wait.”  
  
“I don’t know what to do,” Sho admits suddenly, and Nino frowns.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Sho lets out another sigh. “I wasn’t…this wasn’t supposed to happen.”  
  
Nino leans forward and takes a long sip of his peach milkshake. “Do you regret it?”  
  
When Sho doesn’t say anything, he tries again. “Just be honest, Sho-chan. Do you regret any of it happening? Do you regret everything that happened tonight?”  
  
“No,” Sho says softly, and Nino just listens. “No, I don’t. Not one bit. Though I should. It’s selfish, isn’t it? For me to feel this way?”  
  
Nino keeps his eyes on the water droplets on the sides of his milkshake glass, sliding across the length of the container only to form a little puddle on the table’s surface. “Don’t you think it’s time?” he asks Sho suddenly.  
  
He can hear Sho’s confusion when Sho asks, “Time for what?”  
  
“For you to give it a shot, whatever this is you have with Jun-kun. To be selfish for once.”  
  
Sho’s defeat is evident in his voice. “I don’t have time for that, Nino, you know that. I can’t be selfish considering what I am..” Sho pauses as if to recollect himself before he continues, “I can’t be selfish towards him and yet I still did it. It’s not right. I shouldn’t have because I don’t have the time.”  
  
Nino taps his fingers on the table surface, thinking about how Jun sleeps in Sho’s bed with Sho like this. Why won’t you meet him halfway, he wants to ask? Why won’t you try meeting him in the middle when we both know he’s obviously waiting there?  
  
He runs his hand down his face. “You say you don’t have the time. Well, news flash, Sho-chan. Neither does Jun-kun because we're all running out of time here. You’re not the only three-something year old replicant. But here’s the thing. Even if Jun-kun doesn’t have the time, he made time for you. Tonight and like so many months before tonight. He allotted time for you. And I think you owe it to Jun-kun to honor that.”  
  
“I don’t deserve this Nino,” Sho tells him, still insistent. “No matter how much I want it. If you’re going to ask how much, I’m going to tell you I wanted it from the moment I met him in that bar you sent me to. But it’s not for me. It’s complicated enough as it is. What if…”  
  
“What if what?”  
  
Sho sighs. “What if I expire before he does? Do you see now? If that happens, that will just make things worse for him. He doesn't deserve that.”  
  
He indulges Sho for a moment. “What does he deserve, Sho-chan? What do you think Jun-kun deserves?”  
  
“To be happy,” Sho tells him immediately. “He deserves that and so much more.”  
  
You’re an idiot, Nino wants to say. A big and noble one at that. Instead, he asks, “He’s there right now, isn’t he? Sleeping, like you told me. My point is, he’s there with you right now, isn’t he?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Nino smiles. “And like a real creep, you’re watching him as he sleeps, aren’t you? Watching because you think you may never get another chance to?”  
  
He realizes he hits jackpot when Sho doesn’t say anything else apart from a mumble of “Even though I’m not supposed to.”  
  
“Don’t you think Jun-kun’s wanted this? Why do you think he’s there right now? Do you think he’ll be there if he didn’t want this as well? You told me you wanted this from the moment you met him. He’s there with you, Sho-chan, and you’re an idiot if you tell me you don’t see how mutual it is. What makes you think he doesn’t deserve any of this?”  
  
Sho’s voice is so faint that the only reason he heard it is that the diner is now empty save for him. “I’m not good enough, Nino, that’s why.”  
  
Before he can ask Sho to elaborate, Sho does it. “You know what I am. I’m a faulty machine of an unknown origin, spending my days tinkering with shuttles because I can’t tinker with myself to find answers. And to be honest, I made peace with that. I made peace with the idea that my work is all I will ever have and I should be contented with it. And I was. For a good long while. Then I met him.”  
  
Of all reasons Nino can think of, he didn’t consider Sho’s perception of his self-worth to be the main factor. He feels he should have known, that Sho’s personal insecurities affect his way of seeing things, to the point he restrains himself from wanting and having because he doesn’t think he has the right, that he’s worthy to want and have anything.  
  
“Is it so bad,” he asks Sho, “that you ended up wanting something more? If yes, why? Because you don’t deserve it?”  
  
Sho’s voice is as soft as ever but he can hear the uncertainty in it. “No, because I’m not supposed to even want any of this the first place.”  
  
Supposed to. There’s that again. Nino finds it odd that there are so many things that are supposed to happen but didn’t. He was supposed to die and yet here he is. Sho was supposed to spend his days in solitude and wallow in cycles of self-pity until the end of his days yet here he is. Jun was supposed to be a pleasure model for four years without getting anything more and yet Jun is in Sho’s bed now, sleeping and oblivious to anything.  
  
So much for all of the things that are supposed to happen.  
  
“Whoever said that, Sho-chan?” he asks. “Whoever said that you weren’t supposed to have any of it, that you weren’t supposed to even think of wanting it? Whoever said that?”  
  
Sho’s answer is immediate. “I did. I did when I realized how different I am for our kind.” Sho doesn’t need to elaborate further; Nino understands already. Different because whoever made Sho made him feel lesser even when he’s amongst replicants because his maker took away the one thing he was supposed to have.  
  
“I don’t deserve this, Nino, and neither does he. He deserves something more. He deserves someone else, someone not complicated especially when he hasn’t got long enough. He doesn’t need to be saddled with me because I’ll never be good enough,” Sho says, and Nino wishes he’s there by Sho’s side to either punch Sho in the face or wrap his arms around him.  
  
He can’t decide which one he wants to do more so he only ends up saying, “Sho-chan,” because he can’t believe the things Sho are saying.  
  
“Do you understand Nino? He deserves to be happy.”  
  
As you do, Nino thinks. He wonders why Sho still doesn’t understand that it’s okay for him to be selfish. After seven point six weeks of knowing Jun, Sho should know that it’s perfectly fine for him to want something and to try to pursue it. Sho has been brave once enough to try. What Nino doesn’t understand is why Sho seems to be not brave enough to try _again_.  
  
Nino shakes his head in disbelief, finally understanding. It’s Jun. It’s because of Jun that Sho is feeling like this, that Sho’s courage is being put to the test. Sho doesn’t want to lose this, Nino realizes. Sho doesn’t want to lose any of what he has right now and the mere idea of it happening makes him decide that not pursuing anything will be the better option, because at least he never had it. Sho will have the consolation of not knowing how it feels to be with Jun and therefore will never feel how it is to lose him when the time comes.  
  
Because it will come. Nino knows that as much as Sho does. And Sho’s obviously too invested now that even after tonight, even after everything, he’s still willing to sacrifice his shot at something good, at something better just to ensure Jun’s happiness.  
  
Sho’s willing to be unhappy until the end of his time if it meant that Jun won’t be the same.  
  
Nino wonders how Sho’s mind works, for Sho to think of things this way. As a friend, Nino feels inclined to tell Sho a bit of the truth, that’s Sho really stupid for thinking of these things without even asking Jun about it, for assuming things without even confirming anything.  
  
“Sho-chan. Jun-kun’s there because he wants to be there. I'm pretty sure if you ask him, he'll tell you the same. You say he doesn't deserve you because he deserves to be happy, right?” Nino pauses, still shaking his head at everything Sho said. “Very well then. I suggest you ask Jun-kun what he wants. Ask him outright. Ask him to tell you honestly and if you're right with all of these things you're telling me right now, I promise you a trip to the Orion Nebula with all expenses paid.”  
  
Sho only says his name so he pushes. “Talk to him. Make time for him as you always did. Do as he always did. Meet him halfway like he always waited for you to do, like he always expected you to do because it’s what you always asked of him since this whole thing started. Meet him in the middle like you did with me tonight when you told me all these things.”  
  
He takes a deep breath, hoping Sho is listening. “Believe in him, Sho-chan."  
  
"It's not him that I don't believe in," Sho mutters quietly.  
  
"Then believe in yourself for one last time. You owe him that much. Be brave for one more time, for him. Take one more risk and ask.”  
  
There’s a long moment of silence after that, spanning for four minutes and eleven seconds and Nino uses that time to finish his milkshake.  
  
“That trip to the Orion Nebula,” Sho says suddenly, making him look at his pad.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You’re that confident?”  
  
He smiles. Rather than answer the question, he makes a request. “Tell me how Jun-kun looks like right now.”  
  
Sho seems surprised at this, if his sudden pause is any indication, but he complies anyway. “Peaceful.”  
  
Nino hums. “Like he’s content?”  
  
Sho doesn’t wait to confirm. “Yeah.”  
  
He plays with his straw as he continues grinning. “Then I want you to do something for me.”  
  
Sho’s response is as quick as his earlier affirmation. “Anything. Name it.”  
  
“I will. I want you to go back to your bed and lie down beside Jun-kun as soon as I drop this call. Sleep beside him and save the thinking for tomorrow morning. Then when tomorrow comes, I want you to talk to him. Tell him the things you told me in the best way you can. Be honest with him. He deserves that much from you.”  
  
Sho only utters his name softly, so he continues. “Can you do that for me? I had to reject a client to take your call, you know. I chose you over the promise of money, of credits. Do you realize the gravity of what I just did?”  
  
Sho actually snorts at that, and Nino lets out a little laugh. “Come on, Sho-chan.”  
  
“I can try.”  
  
That won’t do, Nino thinks. “You’ll do better than try. You will listen to me. You said you’ll do anything, right? Well, this is what I want you to do so do it. Have I ever directed you towards something you’ll regret, ever?”  
  
He can hear Sho’s smile in his voice. “Alarmingly enough, no.” There’s a pause before a soft “Thank you” that makes Nino smile.  
  
“You can show your thanks by doing as I say.”  
  
“All right, I can do that,” Sho agrees, and already Nino can hear a shuffle of movement.  
  
Satisfied, he leans back in his chair and asks for the bill from Xindee with a gesture. “Okay, now go the fuck to bed and sleep beside him.”  
  
He can hear the pad being deposited on a flat surface. Probably Sho’s bedside table. “I’m sorry for calling and disturbing you.”  
  
He snorts at that. “Don’t be. You weren’t disturbing. I’ll choose you over any client, Sho-chan, so you better remember this night because tonight’s the only time I said that in my life. But I mean it. Besides, you shouldn’t be sorry, not when Jun-kun won’t call me to fill me in, to tell me about this juicy development.” He grins, making sure Sho can hear how amused he is. “Emperor’s kind of a secretive asshole like that. He’s a little bit of an ingrate after all I’ve done for him.”  
  
Sho laughs, albeit softly because he’s probably back in bed and doesn’t want to disturb Jun’s sleep, and just imagining it makes Nino smile. “Oh, and before I forget,” he says after remembering Cheryl Vinson, and he hears Sho hum in question.  
  
He smiles wider. “Jun-kun is not a morning person. Good night, Sho-yan.”  
  
He cuts the line after that, and his bill arrives just in time. He pays for it and hands Xindee a credit chip as a tip before leaving the diner and heading back home with a smile on his face, feeling extremely confident that he won’t pay a trip for Sho to the Orion Nebula.

**Author's Note:**

> If the whole thing sounds a little different compared to my more recent stuff, that's probably because this was written in 2015. :D


End file.
